Catch My Fall (28 page)

I waited, but he didn’t continue. “I don’t know if I am ready to see you, Cole.”

He took a sharp breath. “Do you think you would – do you think you’ll ever be ready?”

I thought a moment. The moment was short. “Maybe.”

I could feel him deflating, hear the tension soften. He muttered ‘thank you’ and ‘I’ll make it up to you’ as though he were giving some whispered prayer. He agreed to let me sleep on it for a couple nights before we hung up the phone.

I rolled onto my side, curled up on my bedspread still half dressed, and searched my mind for Cole’s face. I saw him there, his dark hair tousled, his head pressed into the pillow beside me. I saw the way he looked at me when we were first together; I saw his smile, saw the sleepy look to his eyes that warned me he was about to reach for me. I’d missed them so desperately once. The new anxiety settled in my stomach like a cannonball, forcing out the sadness for a moment. I embraced the reprieve, smiled back at the imaginary face on the pillow, and quickly realized it had changed.

I wasn’t smiling at Cole. I was smiling at Stellan.

I fought to replace Stellan’s face and closed my eyes.

I cried myself to sleep.

Reprieve, by definition I believe, is short lived – and if it isn’t just humor me. I discovered this quite abruptly when I woke in the wee hours of the morning to my mother rapping at my door.

I grumbled in response. She didn’t hear, and rapped again.

“Come in!” I growled.

She snuck in through a crack, as though opening the door fully might cause it to bite her.

“Honey, are you and Stellan alright?”

What? I thought. My mother is so adept at reading me that in a quiet afternoon she was able to decipher our rift? Was she a Geiger Meter
?

“We’re fine, Mom.”

“Are you sure?” I lifted my head and glared at her, but she continued. “Because he’s sitting on the porch downstairs and won’t come inside.”

I shot up onto my hands and searched her face for any sign that she was kidding. She wasn’t.

“He’s downstairs?”

She nodded. “He says he’s fine on the porch. I’m worried he’s upset, but I have to run out the door.”

I muttered some choice words to myself as I got out of bed. She stepped aside to let me through, the tassels of her shawl tickling my arm as I passed her. She followed a few steps behind as I descended the stairs and caught Stellan’s profile in the living room window. He was sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs, reading.

Faahk!

This wasn’t a text message I could avoid. There was no fleeing him here. I scolded myself for forgetting who I was dealing with and patted my hair down atop my head. Then I froze. It was as though my feet were anchored there beneath the floorboards. Part of me wanted to hide in some corner until he went away, avoid him at all costs, but I knew him well – he would wait me out.

I took a deep breath and scolded myself.

Don’t be a coward, Faye.

Mom grabbed her bag and turned to search my face. “I’m heading out, honey. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

She waited a moment, then went out to her car. She kindly left the door wide open, letting the crisp morning air in to tickle at the bare skin of my arms. Still, I couldn’t move.

Stellan didn’t glance around. He sat reading, tapping his bookmark against the arm of the chair. I could see him clearly, the face I’d been fixated on for a month now; the face I’d last seen staring down at me with confusion, concern, and perhaps even pity. I didn’t want to have this conversation. If he wouldn’t go crawl under a rock and forget I existed, why wouldn’t he let me?

I pulled my legs forward, moving as though I’d grown roots, and stood in the open doorway. He still didn’t look up from his book.

“You can come in, you know?”

The tapping of the bookmark grew sharper a moment, then stopped. He placed it in the pages of his tattered copy of
Ender’s Game
and stood up, stuffing the book into his back pocket. He stared out to the walk below and buried his hands in his pockets.

He towered there, silent - a column of denim in his ancient jean jacket. “We good?”

His voice was soft, but stern. So stern it startled me to hear it. I’d lost sight of how upset he’d been the night of the party, the sound of his voice on the phone with Evan. I’d caused that worry. I’d caused it, and I’d made no amends, nor attempt at such.

I let myself stare up at his face, something I’d avoided until this moment for fear that he might actually look back at me. His jaw was set, the tendons below his ears bared with tension. I felt a knot growing in my throat.

“Are we?” I asked.

He turned on me, coming to stand like the Colossus of Rhodes over me. The familiar scent of him nearly knocked me over, but I stiffened myself against him.

“I don’t know, Faye. Given the fact that I had to come sit on your fucking porch at the butt crack of dawn to get you to even talk to me, I’d say we might not be great.”

“It’s only been a couple days -”

“Oh, is that all?”

I turned and stormed into the house. He followed on my heels like we’d choreographed it. No one shut the door.

“Where ya goin, Faye?”

His tone was snarky, almost condescending, and I turned back in the kitchen hallway to retaliate. Instead I met with the reality of what read on his face. His forehead furrowed between his brows, and his eyes narrowed. He was hurt. He was hurt, and it was my fault.

“I didn’t know what to say to you!”

“So what? Behave like a fucking adult and have some fucking manners when I try to contact you.”

“Oh you’re one to fucking talk! How many times have you given me the fucking silent -”

“You practically tried to eat my face the other night, and you didn’t think we might need to talk about -”

“No, no, no, no! Shut up! Don’t fucking say it!”

He stopped and stared at me. I’d lost my ability to speak calmly, and even I had been surprised by how shrill I’d sounded.

I fought to catch my breath before he would speak again. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I was fucked up.”

“Oh…alright. So is that supposed to explain why you scared the shit out of me – why you didn’t speak to -”

“I said I didn’t know what to say to you!”

He came back without pause, his volume matching mine. “Anything is better than nothing, Faye!”

I felt the knot pulling and twisting in my throat, but I would not cry. I was done crying. I feared he’d read it as grief, some mourning for a pathetic love affair I’d imagined in my sad, heartbroken mind.

The receiving end of Stellan’s righteous anger felt like being shipwrecked.

“I’m sorry!”

He straightened, swallowed hard, and stood there facing the staircase, as though waiting for someone to come down. I watched him and waited for a motion, a word. He glanced back, and his face softened. I almost flinched when he reached a hand toward me, but instead I let him pat my hair down on my head.

He gave a sad smirk. “Ok. We good then?”

I pursed my lips against tears and nodded. I knew the face I was making – the I-just-ate-a-lemon-that’s-all-don’t-fucking-look-at-me face. I tried to turn my head away, but he saw it. He pulled me into his chest, my face planted against the collar of his shirt, and he kissed the top of my head. There, sheltered under the weight of his long arms, there was no fighting the surge from my tightened throat. I was seconds from losing it in his arms.

No, damn it. No.

I felt a pang of grief. This embrace would never be more than it was. There would never be tenderness here, the kind that could warm my heart and my bed. Still, I assured myself that I would rather have him in this guise, than not have him at all. I fought to keep as still as possible, scolded myself when I shuddered.

I pulled away, thinking, ‘get out of his arms, say you need the bathroom and cry there, not here.
Not
here.’

He didn’t release me. I pulled harder this time, and he took my arm, turning me to face him so he could inspect my face. I’d managed to hold in the tears, but just barely.

He looked down his nose at me, one eyebrow raised. I waited to know his mind.

“Wanna get some breakfast?”

I laughed softly and agreed. Somehow, I found the suggestion reassuring. Stellan was unchanged and in Stellan’s world, all roads lead to food. I explained I needed to bathe before I saw the light of day. He assured me that I was the most beautiful woman to be raised by wolves in the world.

I punched him gently.

He tousled my hair. Like a big brother would.

When I reached my room, I heard the TV switch on downstairs and the sound of Stellan’s heavy boots clomping down on the coffee table.

I stood there, just a few yards away from him, shut my bedroom door and slumped down beside my bed. This time I cried without boundary. I keened so hard, I was silent. I was grieving - grieving for something I would never have.

These tears I did not want him to see. These tears he could not soothe.

I’d heard of timeless love stories that ended with war widows dying of a broken heart. In their beds, unable to eat, sleep, or live without their husbands. I understood that now.

The next morning, I deleted Stellan’s texts. I’d been saving every single one he’d sent me for months. They’d made me smile before, but now, I didn’t want to think about them, about how ridiculous I’d been to save them. God, if he’d known…

I continued in the fury of that spirit and deleted every text in my phone. I’d made a habit of deleting Festering Asshole’s texts, but Jackie and Meghan received the same treatment. I wiped the phone clean, as though perhaps letting go of the past few weeks would make me forget them. When I was done, I went for the office.

I stooped under the desk, pulled out the empty trash can and proceeded to dump, crumple and tear every single scrap of doodle covered paper into the bucket. Everything – every comic, every sketch, doodle and design, all shredded in my strange purge. When I was done, I combined it with the kitchen garbage and took the lot outside to await the trash pickup a few days away.

Somehow, this felt better. Somehow, this masochism felt deserved - righteous. Had I been armed with lighter or matches, I might have set the whole mess on fire.

What would the neighbors think?

These words seemed to come in my Grandmother’s voice.

I passed the bird feeders, hanging half full on their metal pole, and stopped. The oak trees were rustling overhead, their leaves having left the backyard a yellow and orange sea of quivering leaves. Every footfall of bird or rodent was announced with their quiet shifts. I listened to the sounds of the neighborhood, smelled the crisp Autumn air. Someone was raking on the next street over, their dog yelping at them in protest from a house window, and far off, the high school marching band was practicing.

I waited for some sound, a declaration that everything was going to be okay. When none came, I slipped back into the house. It even
smelled
empty.

Stellan asked me to stop by that day, to bring by the sketches I had. I thought of the clean office, of setting to work, checking my email for news from Chalice, moving my art files to a flash drive and walking downtown. Neither thought helped the tension in my stomach. Instead I stood in my living room, swaying as though a soft breeze might knock me off my feet.

I couldn’t explain my next move. I didn’t even see it coming when I turned and strode up the stairs with purpose. I walked through my open bedroom door, took my phone up off my bedside table as though in a trance, and without knowing what I would say or why I was calling, I pulled up the contact in my phone and pressed the call button.

When Evan answered, his voice had the timber of a man in bed.

I fought to speak, afraid I’d awoken the lumbering entrepreneurial giant and perhaps his wrath. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Jensen, hey. Don’t even worry about it. What’s up?”

I stood there in my room, the phone to my ear, but I didn’t speak.

“You alright?” He asked.

Again I didn’t speak. Why had I called him? I couldn’t decipher a purpose or a word to say. Why would he have any comfort or advice to offer me? There was no sense to the phone call, yet still - “Are you back in L.A.?”

Evan shifted on the other end before he answered. “I am. Why, do you need me?”

I shook my head. Sadly, he couldn’t hear it.

“Faye? What’s up, goose? What’s going on?”

I scratched my cheek, letting my fingertip graze over my skin idly as I stood there, wordless. I didn’t know the answer to his question. When I finally opened my mouth, I was surprised by my response. “I think I’m losing my mind.”

He shifted again, the sound of a man pulling himself out of bed. He was chuckling softly. “You and me both, dahlin. Why do you think you’re losing your mind?”

I sat down on the bed and listened to him getting up. I started talking – told him about the pancakes I couldn’t eat, about the undeniable urge to burn everything I’d ever created. He listened to me ramble as he got dressed and made his way into what I could only imagine was a wing in his monstrous house. I never mentioned Cole. I never mentioned Stellan. Still, Evan and I remained on the phone, a comfortable rapport between us as we both went through the motions of our mornings. He managed to get me talking about the sordid tale of my job loss and then my house loss. He regaled me with tales of his most recent acquisition and the resulting backlash of user protest at their favorite site being ‘assimilated.’ He called them ‘whiny internet bitches,’ and I laughed. I felt small in the wake of his problems. Somehow, that smallness was soothing. By the time I became aware of the time, Evan and I had been on the phone for two hours. I offered to let him go when he finally breached a subject I’d have loved to avoid.

“Did you finally talk to Stellan?”

I paused. “I did.”

Oh dear God, he must know about my drunken make out attempt. Suddenly the comfort of the conversation was a distant memory.

God, I’m pathetic. Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.