The Light of Day (12 page)

              I nod, my mood shifting as rapidly to worry as it did to anger.  I know I’m on dangerous ground here, getting ready to spiral.  My counselors warned us about this, the emotional upheaval that can come from any event, big or small, and shake our whole foundation no matter how long you’ve been clean.  I can see mine coming, but I can’t seem to stop it.

              “Do you think you’ll go back and try?” I ask and he stares out the window blankly for a second.  “Do you think it will be the same?”

              “I don’t know,” he finally answers and stands to grab a beer from the fridge.  I follow him and lean against the opposite counter, watching as he takes a long gulp.  “The doc says I’m healing, and though I still can’t imagine that I’ll ever be back to where I was, I feel better today than I did last week, and every day I hold a baseball it feels more and more like it’s supposed to be in my hand.”

              “And then what? When you recover? Do you try out somewhere, do you enter the draft?”

              “My agent seems to think if I can prove my speed’s still the same, and if I’m ready by draft time, I’ll be picked up.  If not, it’s free agent and open try outs.”

              “And if those go well, and you make it, what next?”

              “I pray to God my arm keeps up and I work to survive.”

I frown.  “It’s not war, it’s just baseball.”

His laugh is sarcastic, and more than a little defeated.  “The minors are their own kind of war, Blue.  Minimal pay and long bus rides, bad food and hundreds of kids chasing the same dream that reality has told them can only be given to a select few, if not less.  The majors aren’t a reality, not for anybody, and when you’ve given it your shot and failed, you have to face coming home and trying to be someone else after over a decade of only knowing one thing.  You have to learn to integrate into society as a human, not a ball player, and you have to do it while knowing you’ve already failed once, while facing the people around you who know the same thing.”

He takes a long pull from his beer.  I watch his throat work as he swallows, and I wonder somehow if he’s swallowing the bitterness that firsthand experience with this kind of disappointment can bring.  “It’s a heavy thing for a man to come home with a shattered dream and no fucking idea how to find another one.”

I think about my mother and whether or not she ever had a dream, a desire for something more than being the most popular, the prettiest, the most desired.  And then I realize that in my own way that’s where my dream was headed.  All I wanted was to be someone everyone else knew and loved, someone who proved her wrong.

“What’s going on, Blue? Why the questions tonight?”

I shrug, unwilling to explain, searching for the anger I felt earlier as I try to climb out of the despair that’s surrounding me now.  “Isn’t that the game we play? Ask each other things so we can find out each other’s weaknesses?”

“No, it’s not, and it never has been.  Why are you doing this?”

His jaw is tense like his words, and I feel my own shoulders tighten.  He’s done nothing wrong, nothing but offer me friendship and the beginning of a relationship that’s sweeter and more real than anything I’ve ever had, and here I am, trying to cut him down because I can’t seem to matter to anyone else in my life.  I’m testing him, like I tested my mother today, only he calls me on it, clearly more affected by me than she ever was or will be.

“Never mind.  I shouldn’t have asked.”  I go to stand and leave but his words stop me.

“Who are you, Blue?”

He’s still standing on the other side of the kitchen, but I feel his words as if he’s right next to me.

“Nobody,” I say calmly and watch the fire inside of him that he’s been holding back all night ignite.

“Bullshit.”  His words whip out even though his stance stays the same.  “That’s a cop out, Cora, because you’re too afraid to answer.  You started this tonight, so let’s do it.  You wanted to know me? Wanted to see if I was real, was that it? See if you could make me hurt? Well, you can.  Now it’s my turn.  Who are you?”

I
hate
that, hate that he can see what I’m thinking when I feel like I barely know him, hate that he doesn’t always have to ask to understand me.  Even more, I hate that he isn’t afraid to ask questions or say things that most people would never be comfortable verbalizing.

When I don’t respond, he sets his beer down on the counter and steps toward me.  “Let’s try a different one.  Why were you in rehab?”

“Lots of reasons.”

My gaze is direct, my eyes shooting fire, my lips tight as I stand stock still, limiting my response to him.  I know he won’t let me go, but I also know that he expects a reaction, that he’s working for one, just like I was.

“Name one.”

“No.”

“Are you an alcoholic, Blue?”

I laugh bitterly.  “Sure.”

“What does that mean?”

“That abusing alcohol was only one of my many flaws.  Not all rehab is for alcohol, Jake, some of it’s for addiction, some of it’s for abuse, some of it’s just because you need therapy.”

“What was yours for?”

I’m used to his brashness, his inability to understand boundaries or just plain ignorance when it comes to personal space and feelings.  If Jake wants the answer to something, he’s not going to sneak around, he’s going to ask the question, even if that question is hard.  It’s something I admire about him, not that I’ll ever tell him that, especially now when I’m trying to avoid answering the question he’s asked.

“That’s personal.”

“So’s this,” he says before I can move past him.

Chapter Seventeen

Jake

I knew the minute I walked in that she was in a mood and, when she started asking questions, it became clear just what kind.  Something happened to Cora today and she’s out for blood, out to prove that I’m just another person she can shrug off, out to hurt me and see if I’ll walk away.  Well, fuck that.

              She can scrape me raw and I’ll take it, but I’ll also get what I want while she’s doing it because no matter how much I’ve had to walk away from in the past year, the thought of walking away from her, from this, threatens to end me so I refuse to acknowledge it as a possibility.  She took her gloves off and threw the first punch; I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that she did it or that she expected me to just take it without fighting back.  Either way, I’m not backing down because whatever she thinks, I’m not like the other people in her life who have always let her run away — I’m sick of having my feelings thrown in my face, and now’s as good a time as any to show her exactly who she’s dealing with.

              I cup her shoulders in my hands and she stiffens.  We’re still in the kitchen, but I’ve blocked her path so she’s forced to look at me.  When she does, her eyes are as devastated as they are angry.  “I don’t want to be touched right now.”

I ignore her and feel a perverse sense of satisfaction when she tries to struggle away.  I’ve never once in my life used physical force with a woman, but something about this moment makes me want to prove to her that I’m stronger, and I’m not leaving, no matter what she does.

“Blue, did someone hurt you?” The words stick in my throat and even the thought of what they mean brings bile to my throat.  So help me God, if she says yes, I won’t stop until I find out who it was, and when I do there’s nowhere he can go where he’ll be safe.

Her sigh is resigned — a purposefully bored sound, calculated to make me back off at the same time that it cuts me down and makes me feel like a nuisance.  I ignore her, staring until she rolls her eyes.

“Let me save you the time and ask the rest of the questions you have lined up in your head so you don’t have to: Why did I choose alcohol and then men? What is my relationship with father like? What is my relationship with my mother like? What are my friends like? My ex-husband? Are they the reason I chose alcohol?”

She’s trying to be tough, throwing questions at me and challenging me to keep going.  As much as I want to stop, to just bring her close and hold her, I won’t, because I have a need to see this through, not for her or for me but for us.  Somewhere deep down I think she knows that.

“Well?” I say and her eyes slit.

“Not all abuse is physical, Jake, and it’s not always from someone else.  I abused me,” she says before I can ask what she means.  “I didn’t care what I did with my life, or who I used or let use me along the way.  I gave out my body like it was a piece of birthday cake and I drank until it was easy to believe everything I did felt good.  Did I walk around drinking in the middle of the day, dependent on the substance to wake up and function? No, because my dependence wasn’t on alcohol, it was on men.”

Godfuckingdammit.

I want to rage, to yell and break something.  I also want to bring her close and apologize for asking, for making her go through this, but I know we aren’t done.  I hate the thought of Cora and other guys — not because I expected her to be sitting quietly on the sidelines of her life waiting for me to come along, but because I expected her to want better for herself.  She’s telling me that she let other men have her because it was easier than living in the real world with her problems, and that’s not fucking okay.

“Did they hurt you? Did someone hurt you?” I ask again and she shakes her head.

“No more than I hurt them.”  Her voice is no longer biting and strong, it’s dull, weak, sad.  “If you’re asking was I forced, then no, never was I forced, never was I drugged, never was I young and innocent and naïve and taken advantage of.  My choices were —
are
— all my own.  I chose men because I realized at a young age they were the one thing I could easily have that my mother couldn’t, and it made me happy to know that I had something she envied rather than just despised.”

I don’t know who’s more shocked by the words, her or me, but it feels like even the air is still as the last sentiments from what she said echo around us.

I’m barely breathing as she stares at me, her eyes no longer challenging, though I don’t think she knows that.  Somewhere in that last twenty seconds she went from bold to sad, heartbreakingly sad, and even though I’m holding onto her, I know she’s not with me.  Her ghosts have her now and she’s succumbing to them, falling further and further away from me.

              Suddenly, I realize just how far I’ve pushed her.  In my quest to know her, to have her, to challenge her to be honest and to keep her until she’s healed me, I’ve pushed her here, to this place filled with demons and ghosts and memories that make her regret.  Because I need to know her, all of her, because what I want from her is a hell of a lot more than what she’s ever had with or given to anyone else.  Or at least I tell myself that’s the reason.

              But really, right now as I stand here holding her and watching her, I know the real reason I’ve pushed her to open herself up and show me some piece of who she is without the mask is because I need her, and I want her to need me too.  Whatever it is about her that saves me, makes me forget everything I left behind, everything I’ve lost until all I can think about is what I might still get to have, I can’t let it go.

Even now, as I hurt her to get it. 

I struggle to rein it in, to bring myself under control and think of her for a minute, to put aside my mounting desire not just for her, but for everything she is, and think of what my need is doing to her.

“Cora, are you okay?”

It’s a fucking stupid question because even if she was a stranger I could see that she’s not okay.  My hands tighten on her shoulders for an instant and she doesn’t move.  Her eyes are devastated and I know she’s battling not to lose it, not to let go in front of me.  Another pain stabs me as I realize that she trusts me enough to kiss me, to possibly go to bed with me, but she doesn’t trust me enough to hold onto me, and I don’t blame her.

“I’m sorry I asked, sorry I pushed.”  I release her shoulders to take her hands and bring them to my mouth, pressing my lips to them not because I want to persuade her, but because I need to soothe her, make a connection, let her feel me and know I’m here.  To let her know that I can be gentle and thoughtful, not just selfish and demanding.

Whether it’s because of my contact or because of her strength, she comes back, her hands flexing once in my grip before her shoulders straighten and her eyes find mine.  They’re blazing, like a swirling, tumultuous ocean right before the storm swallows its sailors whole.  She might have saved me from drowning a few months ago, but I think right now my siren would like nothing more than to watch me be dragged off land and thrown into the cold abyss.

I try one last time.  “Blue — Cora.”

She shakes her head and takes her hands back, pushing away from me as she steps slowly over and away.  I see the effort it takes, the sheer willpower she uses to bring herself fully upright, with her shoulders straight and her head high.  She stripped herself bare and I let her.  Worse, I didn’t really give her a choice because I wanted to prove that I was in control.

“You might not know it Jake, but sometimes giving up who you always thought you wanted to be is safer than staying on that path of destruction, the one that you know deep down is going to be one heartache after another.  Even if it feels like failing to let everyone know they were right about you, that you weren’t enough.  Sometimes, you just have to fucking start over.”

              She walks away and I let her because at the moment I’m the weakest kind of man there is.  I’m the one who needs more from someone than I even have to give them.  I have nothing for her, and yet, all I want to do is ask her to be with me, to help me, to make me feel like a person again, not a shell, not a hollowed out, useless shell who has nothing for anyone.

              The feelings of inadequacy and helplessness are overpowering, and I want to pound my fists into something, to someone, almost as much as I want to go find Cora and grab onto her and hold her, to tell her that whatever she thinks of herself, she’s wrong.  To tell her that I’m an asshole and I’m sorry.

              I know what she was doing with that story — she was warning me, telling me that she’s someone I don’t want, someone damaged and worthless.  But she’s wrong.  Just as she was wrong to think I’d walk away when she admitted that there’ve been others.  I don’t fucking care whose been here before, though I’d like to find her fucking ex-husband and the rest of the bastards she let into her bed and beat them faceless because the idea of them ignites a blazing fire in my blood, one that wants to wreak havoc on anyone and everyone whose ever hurt her.

              Including myself.

              That thought deflates me and my anger dissipates as quickly as it came.  I stare at the closed door to the room she just walked into and wonder if I’m just another person on her list who’s never been there for her.

Am I someone who’s using her, or can I find something inside of me to show her just how much I want to give her, even if it’s a long shot?