Drawn To You (18 page)

Damien bought one for me every time he saw those machines.

In an instant, my breastbone feels cracked open, my sorrow and guilt spilling out of me with every beat of my heart like blood. I clutch the ring to my chest and curve my body around it, sob after sob tearing its way out of me.

“I’m sorry,” I cry, the room swallowing my words.

I am so sorry.

D
amien’s going
to be so surprised. I can’t wait.

I was supposed to come home for my birthday three weeks ago, but a last-minute pop-up art show I volunteered for kept me too busy. Since I have Fridays off from classes, I told him I was coming home for a long weekend.

Except I ditched my last Thursday class and I’m coming home a night early to surprise everyone.

I haven’t been home since the beginning of the semester. Maintaining a long-distance relationship has been so hard, but we make it work. Everyone kept telling me that a summer fling would never last, yet here we are three years later, still going strong. Kimber thinks I’m nuts to date a boring business major when there are so many cute artists at school, but I wouldn’t trade Damien for the world. He understands when I need to sit and sketch leaves in the park for hours so I can get them just right. Besides, no one else’s dimples make me melt the way his do.

I fiddle with the plastic ring on my pinky finger as I drive. This one’s orange. It’s such a goofy little thing, but it reminds me that he’s thinking of me, even when I’m not here.

When I pull into the driveway, I can already tell no one’s home. The lights are all out, even though it’s only 7:30. Iris got her acceptance to U-Dub last spring and started her first semester a few months back, so she’s at the dorms. Mom and Dad are probably having a date night. No problem. I just needed to pick up Damien’s key.

It feels like it takes forever to get to his place, despite Maple Valley being pretty much a suburban ghost town after seven o’clock on a weekday. The parking lot of his complex is absolutely packed, and if the thumping music is any indication, it’s because someone’s having a rager.

My heart’s going a mile a minute as I climb the stairs to his floor, and it’s not because I’m out of shape. I have to dodge around a couple making out, which would normally annoy me, but this time I smile. I’m going to be doing that very soon, I hope.

People are spilling out from the apartment across the hall from Damien’s. That’s clearly the eye of the storm. Damien loves scenes like this and I wonder if he’s in the crowd somewhere. Either way, I don’t do crowds, so I’ll wait for him inside. Maybe I can even make myself comfortable in the wink-wink nudge-nudge kind of way.

I unlock his deadbolt and slip inside. The music from the party is barely muffled by his door, and there are a few empty beer bottles on his counter, along with several cups. Looks like people were in and out of here, too.

There’s a noise from his bedroom and I can’t help but grin. Good, he’s home.

I’m walking toward the room when I hear another noise, one that confuses the hell out of me because it sounds an awful lot like a girl laughing.

I stop in my tracks.

That can’t be right.

There it is again, and it’s definitely feminine. He must be watching a video. He has to be.

Even though my brain’s trying to convince me nothing’s wrong, a sick feeling starts to twist in my gut.

I take the last few steps and open the bedroom door.

There’s a gasp.

It takes me a few seconds to really register what I’m seeing. Damien’s shirtless and disheveled, blinking at me like a deer in headlights. The girl next to him is down to her underwear, her polka dot bra half covered by her hands.

I recognize that bra. I’ve changed next to the owner of that bra a hundred times.

“Mia,” Iris says, her eyes wide with shock and her hair standing out every which way. “Oh God.”

Oh God.

The excitement that’s been buzzing in my veins for the better part of a day turns sour, digging claws into every nerve until I want to scream. Nothing about this is right. I try to say something, but my mouth won’t work. All I know is my hands are cold, shaking, aching to lash out. Iris committed an ultimate betrayal of sisterhood in the most literal sense, and she may as well have gutted me. My brain can’t compensate for this. It can’t make up a pretty little story for why my sister is in my boyfriend’s room in her underwear. There’s only one answer.

I turn on my heel and I run. On the way out, I hit a chair, hard, but the sharp sting across my leg doesn’t even slow me down.

There are too many goddamn people in this hall. I push past them, through them. A drink spills all over me, someone’s yelling, it doesn’t matter. It’s all a blur.

My boyfriend’s screwing my little sister, and I need to be as far away from them both as possible.

I can feel the tears building up inside, pressing against the walls of my body, but I’m too angry to cry. I’ll cry later.

I’m halfway across the parking lot when Iris catches up to me, her fingers tangling in my sleeve. I jerk my arm away and whirl on her, my teeth bared.

“Mia, wait, this is a misunderstanding,” Iris says. At least she put her dress back on before following me. Her curls are sticking out every which way and her skirt’s all crooked. She’s so beautiful, and I hate her.

“Don’t,” I say, my voice coming out quiet and strangled. I want to get as far away from her as possible. “Don’t treat me like I’m stupid. I understand exactly what’s going on.”

She doesn’t stop. “No, you don’t. You weren’t supposed to be back until tomorrow, and we were going to tell you… it shouldn’t be like this.”

“You’re right,” I say. “You shouldn’t be fucking my boyfriend.”

Iris cringes away from me like I’m made of live wires.

“It’s not like that. We’re not just messing around.” She sets her jaw, her eyes bright with hurt.

A fresh burst of pain rushes through me and I feel bile rise in my throat. Knowing this is more than physical makes everything worse and I have to suppress the sob building in my chest.

“Are you in love?” I mock, trying to force myself back together. “A pair of star-crossed lovers, kept apart by the fact that he’s
dating your god damn sister?
”

Damien’s stumbles down the stairs. He trips off the last one and plods toward us, weaving as he walks.

How did I ever find him attractive?

“Babe,” he says. “C’mon, let’s go back upstairs, s’not what it looks like.”

“You absolute shithead,” I spit. “At least Iris has the decency not to try to pull one over on me.”

Iris’s face relaxes and she nods. “I’d never lie to you. I wanted to tell you.”

My laughter is dry in my throat. “We talk almost every damn day. You had ample opportunity.”

“Will you just listen?” she says. “Being away from home is killing me. I needed this.”

“Do you hear yourself? College is hard for everyone, Iris. Grow up.” I turn around and walk to my car again. I need to be a thousand miles away.

Damien comes around to block me and it takes everything in me not to hit him in the jaw. Instead, I pool all of my fury into my throat and scream, “Get away from me.”

Iris is there, too. “Please, Mia. I need you to listen. I need my sister!”

“No!” I yell, my throat going ragged. “How fucking dare you, both of you, treat me like I’m the one in the wrong. You’ve been going behind my back, but now you want to talk? No. Fuck it. I’m done with both of you. I never want to see either of you again!”

Iris reaches out to me and I slap her hand away. She’s repeating my name over and over, her words watery with tears. She says she never meant to hurt me, that she missed me so much, that school is lonely. I ignore it all, climbing into my car and starting the engine. My window’s cracked, and she leans down and tries to talk to me through the opening.

“Get away, Iris!” I yell.

When I put the car in reverse, she scrambles out of the way. Before I shift to drive, I look in the rearview mirror and see her there next to Damien, tear tracks down her face. Her mouth forms the word “wait.”

I don’t wait. I drive, and drive.

I make it to the freeway before I let my own tears fall.

Thirty minutes later, two police cruisers and an ambulance speed by in the opposite direction, their lights blazing. I barely notice.

W
hen I wake
up in the morning, there are voices in the kitchen. Mom and Dad are easy to recognize, but there’s another one that I can’t quite place. I’d love to go back to sleep until they leave, but the rumbling of my stomach finally breaks me down. I haven’t eaten since the small bites at the showcase last night.

I pause before entering the kitchen and take a deep breath, preparing for the inevitable small talk I’ll have to perform if it’s one of Mom’s friends in there. When I’m mentally prepared, I turn the corner.

A blonde girl turns around in her chair and gives me one of the sternest looks I’ve ever seen. I blink. I’m so unused to seeing her in this context that it takes me a minute to realize she’s really here.

“No note?” Audrey says. “Completely unacceptable. And you should pick up your damn phone.”

“That’s what we keep telling her,” Dad says. He’s leaning against the counter with an auto magazine tucked under his arm, smiling fondly at my roommate.

I pick my jaw up off the floor long enough to say, “What are you doing here?”

“Making sure you’re all right, since you gave me absolutely no indication that you were before you ducked out in the middle of the night without warning,” she says.

“I didn’t mean…” I shake my head. “How did you know where to find me?”

She picks up a mug of steaming coffee and takes a sip. I can’t believe she got my mom to make her coffee after 8 a.m.

“You didn’t make it easy, considering you’ve never brought me around to meet your parents,” Audrey says. “I made do with sneaking into your room and finding an unopened birthday card on your desk. The surname on the return address was the same as yours. I put two and two together. Thanks for letting me know you had a birthday, by the way.”

Mom tut-tuts from her own seat at the table, giving me the disapproving eye. “I wish you’d talk to people, honey. It’d do you good.”

The fog in my brain clears a bit and I remember it’s a weekday.

“Audrey, did you… call out of work?” I say. Audrey never calls out. Not even when she pulls all-nighters.

She stands out and walks over to me, putting her hands on my shoulder and looking me in the eye. “You’re more important than work.”

Wow. That’s serious. More serious than if she’d told me she loved me.

She hugs me, one of those all-enveloping squeezy tight hugs, and I wrap my arms around her. A wave of gratitude passes over me and I shut my eyes tight to keep from crying.

Dad clears his throat. “Honey, maybe you ought to give your friend a tour of the house?”

He gives me a quick wink and I take his hint. Audrey and I have a lot to talk about.

“Okay,” I say, releasing Audrey from our hug. “This way.”

She follows me down the hall, and I’m really not sure what to say. Thankfully, she always knows how to fill the silence.

She glances at the photographs lining the wall, looking over each one as she walks. When she gets to Iris’ senior portrait, she stops and points.

“This girl,” she says. “She’s the one Ezra painted.”

My insides twist at the mention of his name. I lick my lip and say, “Yeah. She’s my sister.”

Audrey looks at me in question.

“I have a lot to tell you, I guess,” I say, gesturing to my room.

I close the door behind us while Audrey goes to sit on my bed. She glances around my room.

“It looks like a cartoon character threw up in here,” she says.

I laugh weakly. It helps lift some of the weight off my chest, and I’m grateful. Audrey’s always been there for me, and it’s long past time for me to let her in.

I take a deep breath.

I’m ready.

“So,” I start. “Almost a year ago, my sister died.”

Audrey’s expression softens as she fiddles with my bedspread. “I’m sorry. That really sucks.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it really does.”

Once I get going, I can’t stop. It all spills out, everything that happened over the last year. Dropping out of art school, going to therapy, moving to Portland, trying to forget everything and leave it all behind. The funeral. The drawings.

The night when everything went wrong.

Halfway through my story, Audrey pulled me down to sit beside her and put her arm around me. It’s there now, tightening every now and again to remind me she’s there.

“I take it Ezra knew all this?” she asks.

“He knew enough, but not everything,” I say. “He didn’t ask to paint her. He should have asked.”

“Is that why you were so upset when he revealed the painting?”

“Sort of, but that’s not all of it,” I say. “When you’ve been hiding your ghosts under your bed for the better part of a year, you don’t really want to be confronted by them in a room full of perfect strangers when you’re not expecting it, you know?”

“I can understand that,” she says, taking my hand and squeezing it.

My next breath rattles in my throat. “I was overwhelmed. Ever since the night she died, I’ve always been able to control when I saw her, even if it hurt. At the MAG was the first time I got caught off guard. It reminded me of that night and how I would have done everything differently if I knew I’d never see her again.”

“Hey,” Audrey says as she lets go of my hand to rub my back. “Don’t do that to yourself.”

“I told her I never wanted to see her again.” I can feel the scar tissue over my heart breaking open again. “The last thing she ever heard me say was to get away.”

“You two had years together, and she knew you loved her, even if you were fighting,” Audrey says. “And she loved you, too. Enough to come after you.”

Hot tears spill down my cheeks as I stare at my hands in my lap. “Maybe loving me is what killed her.”

“A series of mistakes and a heavy dose of alcohol killed her. People fuck up, Mia. They fuck up all the time. Your sister fucked up, you fucked up, and your ex definitely fucked up. You don’t ever have to forgive him if you don’t want to, but you should forgive yourself.”

“How?” I press the heels of my palms into my eyes. “How can I possibly forgive myself for being so angry at her that night?”

“By admitting you deserved to be angry and accepting that you can love and hate someone at the same time. Then you remember that you loved her more, and she loved you, and you find a way to honor that.”

I sigh and wipe my tears away. “Are you sure you didn’t minor in psychology?”

Audrey shakes her head and stands up to stretch. “Nah. I’m just good at people.” She helps me up and adds, “I’m really glad you talked to me.”

“Me too.”

It only takes me a few minutes to gather up my things back into the duffle bag. Mom and Dad aren’t thrilled to see me go so soon, so I promise I’ll make it back soon to visit Iris with them, and I mean it. I can’t keep running away.

As Mom hugs me goodbye, she says, “You should consider giving Damien a call. It’ll be good for your heart.”

“Not yet, Mom,” I say. “I’m not ready.”

“I hope you will be soon.”

Audrey and I stop in Olympia on the way home. We drink single-origin coffee and talk, and this is the best I’ve felt in weeks. Months, even. Letting her in feels like a good decision.

Letting Ezra in, on the other hand, I’m not so sure about.

We’re so preoccupied chatting like old friends that when we get home, we don’t notice the person sitting on the floor outside our apartment door until he stands up.

I stop dead in my tracks.

Ezra raises his hands like he’s trying to placate me. “I just want to talk.”

Rather than answer him, I whirl on Audrey, my temper flaring. “Did you set this up?”

“No,” Audrey says, shaking her head.

“I’m standing right here,” Ezra says.

We both glare at him. Seeing him brings back that sinking, twisting feeling from last night. Even though it feels like a lifetime ago now, the pain’s still tight in my chest.

“I don’t think Mia wants to see you right now,” Audrey says. I appreciate her protectiveness.

Ezra tries again. “Please, I just wanted to say --”

“Didn’t you hear me?” Audrey says, and I can tell she’s ready to kick him down the hall if she has to.

Ezra’s jaw is set and I can tell he’s going to push back, but his eyebrows are furrowed in worry. He looks at me and I can tell he’s afraid I’ll walk away from him. Even now, he won’t walk away from me first. The knot of fury in my chest loosens a little. Mom said I should work on forgiveness. Maybe I should start here.

“It’s fine,” I say to Audrey. “Thank you, but I’m good.”

“You sure?” she asks suspiciously.

I nod, and she gives Ezra one more glare in solidarity with me before unlocking the door and going inside. Ezra shifts on his feet, looking tense and uncomfortable. We wait for an awkward beat on the sidewalk.

“Come inside,” I say, waving him ahead of me.

Audrey’s retreated to her room, but I know she’ll be out in a hot second if she suspects I need her. I close the door behind us.

Ezra says, “Mia, I’m so, so --”

“Let’s do this in my room,” I say, cutting him off. I push past him and walk down the hall. He follows.

Once we’re inside, he tries again. “Mia, I’m so sorry. I really messed up, painting your sister without asking or thinking about how it would affect you, and then I was an asshole about it when you got upset.”

“You sound like you rehearsed that in front of a mirror,” I say, rubbing my arm up and down to try and mediate some of the anger seeping out of my pores. I try perching on my bed, but I’m too on edge to sit. I stand up again, crossing my arms in front of me.

“That’s because I did,” Ezra admits. “It was too important to get wrong.”

He reaches out like he wants to take my hand, but I move away, backing toward my window. If he touches me, I might break down, and I don’t know if I’m ready yet.

“I guess I wanted a touch of your greatness, and that was wrong,” he says.

“What are you talking about?” I say. My
greatness
? I’m not great. That man I want to be with complimented me, and all I can think of is how much I hurt. I’m broken.

He gestures weakly at my desk. “When I saw your drawings, the work was so raw, so emotional. You don’t hide behind anonymity and shadows like I do. I tried to borrow some of your pain, and I should have been using my own.”

Unbidden, his words stoke the flames of my anger until it’s boiling over in my stomach like acid. I want to fight. Fighting means I don’t have to feel that pain.

“You don’t borrow other people’s pain,” I snap. “It’s not for you to play with and shape to your own whims.”

“I know,” he says. “You’re right.”

The fire inside me licks higher. Why is he so willing to overlook how messed up I am? What gives him the right to chip away at every barrier I ever put up? I should want to go back to being alone, when I could stay numb and not have to expose my heart.

“Stop agreeing with me!” I yell, my frustration overwhelming. “Stop being so wonderful and perfect and understanding! I need to be mad at you, do you not get that? I need it.”

Anger is easier than love.

He moves like he wants to reach for me again, but he holds back. It’s like he doesn’t want to give me the opportunity to push him away. He should be pushing me away. I’m not worth it.

“You can be mad at me if it makes you feel better,” he says. “Whatever happens, I want you to be happy.”

“I don’t
deserve
to be happy!” I say. I can’t keep channeling my sorrow into anger. It’s not working. “Iris never gets to be happy again, and I helped cause that. What right do I have to be happy?”

“You have every right,” he says.

“No.” I’m shaking my head, pacing past him toward my window. “No, I don’t. I don’t deserve happiness, and I definitely don’t deserve you.”

“Autumn,” Ezra says, and I break apart at the sound of my nickname.

The last cracks in my walls are crumbling, letting the light shine in. I struggle to patch them, to keep it out, but it’s no use. He’s breaking through.

“Autumn’s the season when everything dies,” I say softly. “Summer’s full of sunshine and laughter. You deserve better than me.”

“Summer’s all show. Autumn is warmth, and family, and a thousand colors. When the summer’s over, autumn brings everyone home again. You’re home to me, Mia.”

He drops all pretense and comes up behind me, putting his hands on my shoulders. I let him, this time, and cover my face with my hands to hide my tears.

I am so tired of crying.

I want to let the sunshine in.