All She Wanted (2) (17 page)

Briggs

There were several calls during the
night, but nothing of great significance. I found myself awake and meandering
toward the station’s gym around the midnight hour. The punching bag that was isolated
in the back corner called to me, the way it always did when I was anxious.
Chief had purchased it for me a couple years ago. Though I no longer fought for
sport or money, there was no better way for me to condition my body or deal
with my frustrations.

After a hard workout I showered and
fell into a restless sleep.

I had texted Charlie first thing in the
morning, but she hadn’t responded yet. I hoped she was able to sleep in, but as
noon rolled by, I had grown increasingly concerned. It wasn’t like her to not
reply; the girl’s phone was practically sewed into her hand. I tried again.

Me
: If you don’t respond to this, I’m sending over fifteen
pizzas…and they will be staggered on the hour. You have five minutes. Starting
now.

This time she responded. Charlie wasn’t
an abbreviated
texter
. She was funny, witty, and full
of spunk. That usually translated into long-winded texting rants, but not
today.
 

I stared at my screen, tensing with
uneasiness.

Miss
Strawberry Shortcake
: I’m fine.

Those two words were as startling as a punch
to the jaw. I looked at them over and over for the next four hours.
She texted nothing more.

Maybe
she was tired?

Maybe
she was busy at the piano?

Maybe
she was-

“Girl troubles?” Evan asked, slumping
down by me at the table. We each held a sandwich that looked like it could be
on
Man Verses Food.

“Nah,” I said, shaking my head, not
wanting to talk about Charlie at the station—except with Kai, but he was off
today.

“Well, you’ve been staring at that same
screen for hours now—what gives?”

Evan was a nice guy—a bit of a geek, but
genuine. Chief had pushed him on me when he first started at the station, telling
me I needed more
good influences
in
my life. Naturally, that had been my reason to stay away from him at first. Kai
was enough of a good influence on me. I didn’t need more than that. I couldn’t
handle more than that.

But as my friendship with Kai grew, Evan
had somehow managed to work himself into the mix. He was alright—a friend.

“It’s nothing, just…trying to figure
something out.” I mumbled to myself.

“Well…let me know if you do. I’m still
waiting on an app to come out that will tell me how to talk to a woman, much
less figure her out,” he laughed.

“I’ll be sure to let you know, Evan.”

**********

As the sun set, I started to pace.

Around dinnertime I had thrown in the
old pride towel and called her. She didn’t answer. Something was wrong.
Something was
very
wrong. Three more
men had joined the crew for the evening as I walked down the hallway.

I couldn’t stay another night here—not without
knowing what was up with Charlie. I felt like I was starting to go crazy. As I
passed the bulletin board on my right there were all sorts of brightly colored
flyers tacked to it. During my shift I had passed it at least a dozen times, but
this time…this time I saw something that made my blood turn cold.

Saturday, April 28
^th
!

Join us for a Fun Run…

I let the words at the bottom blur. I
didn’t care about the details. But that date…that date, was today. And today
was the day that Charlie would have married that pathetic loser.

I walked back down the hall, grabbing
my duffle bag and keys from my locker.

“Evan, I have to leave. Can you take
care of things? Call Smith or
Matty
?” I asked him, borderline
frantic.

“Yeah, sure—you figured it out?” he
called after me as I ran through the parking lot.

I didn’t reply because I hoped I
hadn’t. And more than that, I hoped I wasn’t too late.

**********

The black storm clouds overhead blocked
the moonlight, as the drizzle of rain from minutes earlier turned into an all-out
monsoon. I pulled into Charlie’s driveway, banging the heel of my hand against
the steering wheel. Her car was gone.

How
could she do this? How could she leave and not tell me?

A nauseating feeling of dread washed
over me as I thought about her out at some stupid club numbing her pain, while falling
prey to a thousand other kinds of horrors at the same time. Fear, anger,
rage—those feelings I could deal with, but this feeling?

This feeling was the worst one of all:
Helplessness.

Charlie

It crinkled between my fingers—the one
thing I had kept besides the ring.

Sasha had made me burn the pictures, except
for the one I had destroyed on our dorm room wall a month ago. Any memorabilia
from the concerts, clubs, and museums we’d gone to had long ago turned to ash, but
I couldn’t part with the note.

It outlined my reality; it outlined my
greatest fear.

Charlie-

In music, there are many
instruments that serve just one purpose: to complement.

They work to enrich
the sound of another, to blend, and to harmonize—adding to the collective whole
of a melody line. But there are other instruments, which were only ever meant
to stand alone, to solo. We, unfortunately, both fall into that latter
category, Charlie. And two solo instruments should never share the stage.

We want different
things, have different goals, and in the end I know we would both find
ourselves as unhappy as I am now. The idea of faithfulness to one woman for the
rest of my life is one that suffocates me. I told you that from the start…you
were the one who pushed for something more, something I didn’t want.

Goodbye Charlie,

Alex

Even in his goodbye note he hadn’t said
the words.

I, of course, had told him I loved him
early on. But his response was always the same, a kiss, as if to shut me up so
I wouldn’t say more. When he finally did say it, I knew now that he had only wanted
to keep the peace.

Our engagement was a final arm-twist—a last
desperate attempt instigated by me. I needed something tangible to prove that I
hadn’t made a huge mistake in choosing Alex over my family, or my friends, or my
faith. I needed to know that I hadn’t thrown them away for
no
reason at all.

I believed marriage would prove his
love.

I believed marriage would make him
faithful.

I believed marriage would right the wrongs.

But a marriage to Alex wasn’t the
miracle I had been looking for.

I could finally see that now, but
knowing truth and feeling truth were very different things. I stared into the ominous
night as the rain pelted down around me. I wished it could wash away the past.
I wished it could wash me whole. If only it had that kind of power.

A blinding light interrupted my
wishing.

Briggs

Maybe
she left a note? Maybe she didn’t want to text, but had written it down
somewhere inside?

I knew I wasn’t being rational, but
trying to rationalize how you’re not being rational in the middle of a crisis, just
doesn’t work. I grabbed the key to the house out of my glove box and threw open
my door, leaving the ignition running.

I ran through the rain to the front
door. As I shoved the key into the cold metal lock, I startled back at the
sound of a voice.

“I thought you weren’t coming back until
tomorrow.”

I threw my head to the left, but couldn’t
see her. The glaring light from my headlights was pointed in the opposite
direction, leaving nothing but shadows on the porch. I fought the impulse to
yell…to rant…to roar at her in frustration, but the tenderness in her voice had
melted all those reactions away.

I moved closer to the direction her
voice had come from, straining to see her silhouette in the darkness. About two
feet away, my eyes finally adjusted enough to see the outline of her body. She
was sitting on the porch swing, but there was no movement to it. Her knees were
drawn-in, her arms wrapped around herself.
 

I knelt down in front of her, a few
inches away.

“Charlie
, sweetie…are
you hurt? Did something happen tonight? Where’s your car?” The gentleness in my
voice was surprising, even to me.

She lifted her head from her knees and
seemed to look at me, or at least look toward me—I couldn’t see her eyes.

“In the garage. I parked it inside before
the rain started.”

She doesn’t
sound drunk.

I took a deep breath. “Charlie, I’m
gonna go shut off my truck. I’ll be right back.”

“Fine.”

There was that unnerving word again. I turned
off my truck and in the
process,
the motion detector light
came on. I could see Charlie now, fully illuminated.

“Can I sit next to you?”

“If you want to.”

“I do.”

“I haven’t been drinking if that’s what
you’re worried about.”

She turned her face toward me, laying her
head down on top of her knees while keeping eye contact.

“I can see that,” I said, pushing the
swing to rock back a bit, “I’m sorry I wasn’t here today, Charlie. I forgot. I
know it must have been a hard day to spend alone. Were you...out here thinking
about
Alex
?”

It was like swallowing a live roach to
even say his name, but to my surprise she shook her head
no
. I waited, giving her time, but what came next was a statement I
couldn’t have prepared for.

“My mama killed herself when I was five.”

Charlie

I hadn’t planned on telling him. I had
never told before.

Not to Sasha, or Jackie, or even to
Alex.

Simple
was easy for people to understand,
complicated
meant even more complicated relationships. I didn’t want
it following me, or the word I couldn’t bring myself to say aloud: Suicide. It
was bad enough that I had to tell my grade school friends I was in an “art
club” on Tuesday afternoons—a club they could never join, primarily because it
didn’t exist. Therapy wasn’t a world most kids were familiar with. I wasn’t
about to isolate myself even more by becoming the foster kid who had lived in a
glorified hole for the first five years of her life and who had consequently
found her mother dead next to several empty pill bottles.

That truth was hard to swallow.

Briggs stared at me. Even as the motion
light clicked off, I could feel his gaze like a warm touch on my face. I knew
he was confused. I lifted my head up again, shifting my gaze back to the inky sky.
The rain had picked up in intensity, as had the wind. I shivered involuntarily.
Briggs quietly took off his jacket and put it over my shoulders.

“Max and Julie—my mom and dad—adopted
me. I was born to Abigail Dawson, she was my mama. My life was…
difficult
, although it took me years to
understand just how bad it really was. I had a very skewed definition of
normal. She wasn’t mentally stable, and rarely got out of bed, leaving me to
fend for myself. I was always worried about her. I wanted to fix her, and make
her better. But one day, when I got back from another unsupervised wandering…she
was dead. I found her that way. It was two days before anyone came for me. I went
to live with the Lexington’s after that.”

“Charlie, I…I-”

“I know. It’s ugly—there’s no other way
to say it.” I exhaled, “Today was just a big, fat reminder of it all.”

He seemed to contemplate this as his hand
moved to the top of my head. With slow, steady movements he stroked my hair. I closed
my eyes, letting the rhythm calm me. It reminded me of something my mom—Julie
Lexington—used to do for me when I had had a bad dream. She would come into my
room and sit on my bed and stroke my hair. Sometimes we would get up together
and she would make me apple cinnamon tea, my favorite. She never made me go
back to sleep right away. It was as if she knew what was waiting for me
there—or who was waiting for me:
Mama.

In my relaxed state I felt the piece of
paper slip through my fingers and flutter down in front of us. The sound was
barely that of a whisper as it hit, but Briggs heard it, and reached for it a
second later.

“What’s this, Charlie?”

I swallowed, the burning hole in my gut
still raw, still open.

But again, I surprised myself.

“It’s the note, the one Alex left for
me. The one where he tells me that I’m only good as a solo instrument,” I laughed,
but there’s no humor it in.

I felt Briggs tense beside me. He
stared at it, “And he…he reminds you of your mom?”

“Not my mom…my mama. And yes, now he
does.”

“How?” he asked. It was a curious
question, but there was something deeper it in that I couldn’t quite identify
without being able to see him clearly.

“Because in one way they’re the same,”
I sighed, “Neither of them
wanted
me
in the end.”