Live (The Burnside Series): The Burnside Series (27 page)

“I’ll stay here with you.”

“No. You have to go. You have to at least stop by work, talk to your crew. Talk to Carrie for me. This isn’t—” She looked away.

He wasn’t hers. This wasn’t his to help with. These weren’t his people. He looked at Lacey and her look was sympathetic, but he could tell. She agreed with him.

Not hers. Not his.

“Actually, Hefin, if you don’t mind … I came here with Sam. My kid’s at Betty’s and I should see if he got enough sleep last night to get him ready for school.”

Destiny pulled her giant keychain from her pocket, its labeled keys as colorful as jewels. Her whole life. Keys to the people all around her. She flipped through the ring and sorted out a key with a navy blue tag. “This will unlock the limo, the one next to it is the starter. If you’re not sure about driving it, Lace can.”

She turned away. He looked at the tag. In small neat letters it said
DAD’S LIMO
. Then a hand-drawn heart.

“Come on,” Lacey said, and touched his arm. He turned away to embrace Destiny, but she had already walked up to Paul, who had been waiting by a reception desk.

“Come on,” Lacey said again.

Destiny walked away from him and he walked away from Destiny. He started to take a wrong turn down one of the strange hallways, and Lacey pulled him in the right direction.

But it wasn’t right. He looked back and couldn’t see her anymore.

The bank of doors exiting the hospital air-locked so that when you opened them, the stagnant air of the hospital rushed out without letting any of the outside air in. Hefin walked several paces before he realized that the morning spring air was cool and sweet.

Several more paces before the air started to choke him.

Destiny woke up to the sound of loud clanking nearby. In fact, it sounded like whatever was being clanked was right by her head.

She pulled her pillow over her head, then regretted it, because underneath the pillow and the covers she could smell tea and sugar and sawdust and also, something sort of musky and not polite.

No more tears came though, just dry-tears heaves. The worst.

So she burrowed deeper and took shallow breaths to protect her against the impolite love smells and dry cried and hated the clanking that had woken her up and reminded her that she was completely miserable.

When Sam had dropped her off after an entire day of first freezing and starving and crying in the ICU waiting room, then watching Sarah breathe, then cry, and finally demand to go home, they sat in his car in front of her house.

Des hated in-the-car conversations with Sam. She’d put her hand on the door handle to escape and winced when he put his hand on her shoulder.

“Wait.”

“I’m pretty tired, Sam.”

“Just. Wait.”

“Okay. No yelling.”

“I’m not …” He blew out a hard breath and was quiet. Miracle.

Des had closed her eyes and leaned back in Sam’s bucket seat. Sam had stopped smoking around the time their dad had been diagnosed with lung cancer, but his car still held the acrid edge of however many dozens and dozens of cigarettes he had burned through driving around.

It was comforting. It smelled like Dad. Like Sam, too, except not anymore. Which was good. It was weird how something that would be awful and disgusting associated with anyone else was so good when it was connected to someone you loved. Des hated breathing in the cigarette smoke that clung to a certain coworker after she came back from smoke breaks, but here, now, breathing in Sam’s old Camel Lights, she’d felt a little
better.

“Desbaby—”

“Don’t call me that. Not right now.”

“You’re mad.”

She’d rolled her head to look at Sam. His red hair was in clumped spikes all over his head, his whiskers mixed up with his freckles. He had his hand on the steering wheel and he was rhythmically squeezing it, hard, like it was one of those weird hand-and-forearm exercisers he used to use when he was a teenager while he did sit-ups in front of the TV. Which was weird.

Sam did a lot of sports back then. Even now he was always moving. Des had thought he looked like he’d been working out. A lot. He was probably the only person in their entire neighborhood who ran, besides Darby Miller, this guy in his sixties who ran relay in the Olympics a million years ago.

Des couldn’t remember a time she didn’t idolize Sam. When she was a kid, she loved that they shared their dad’s red hair. It was like the three of them were in a club. Except Sam never seemed to want to be in the club.

He always seemed like he wanted to be someplace else.

And he kind of had a problem with yelling. It kind of scared her when she was little, but then she realized that his storms were fast and furious. The best strategy was to stand right in the face of them and wait for the eye. Sam wasn’t so bad in the eye of his storms.

In fact, he could be kind of great.

So she’d waited in the car, looking at him. Had realized he was as tired as she was, probably even more tired, because he had been working for who knows how long before he met PJ and Sarah at the hospital. Then all the yelling at the hospital. Then all the yelling at her.

Exhausting.

She’d looked at him and waited in the eye of Sam’s storm.

“I’m sorry,” he’d said.

“You don’t sound sorry.”

He’d put both hands on the steering wheel to squeeze. Muscles popped out of his arms. It was sort of gross and fascinating at the same time. “She could’ve died, Des.”

She’d had a few more tears left, then, and she lost them down her face, hot and
overly salty. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

He’d looked at her, his eyes so bloodshot it made her own burn in sympathy. “It’s not your fault.”

“You don’t sound like you think it’s not my fault.”

His eyes had closed and he’d squeezed the steering wheel tighter. “Who’s that guy?”

“Hefin?”

No one could make an incredulous look more incredulous than Sam. “Hefin?”

“He’s Welsh.”

“He’s old.”

“Jesus, Sam, he’s your age.”

“I’m ten years older than you.”

“And I’m not an infant.”

“No, but you’re young. And vulnerable.”

“You’re making me sound like fancy lettuce.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“It means I’m not tender and bruiseable and young. It means I am a grown woman, who has grown friends, some of whom come from other countries. It means I get it, I get why you’re angry, I’m angry at me. All day, all I have been able to think about is why I couldn’t put it together. I remember, now, what they said about leg pain. But I’ve been going over there, all the time, Sam. All the time. Even when she doesn’t want me to, which is basically a hundred percent of the time. I fucked up. I got tired. I wanted help.”

“You have help.”

She’d closed her eyes again. Breathed in the Camel-scented air. “I know.”

“Sarah needed all of us.”

“She has all of us.”

“And now she’s in the hospital.”

“I thought we were somehow happy about this. The hospital is, after all, your territory.”

“I hate the hospital.”

“Says the doctor.”

“It’s a great place to get a nosocomial infection, have a serious fall, receive an incorrect medication or dose of medication, or get surgery on the wrong part.”

“The wrong part of
what
?”

“Your body.”

“Like, you go in to get your appendix out and—”

“They take out your spleen. Which is on the other side.”

“Holy shit, Sam. And you’re one of them. One of these nosocomial wrong-part removers.”

Sam had pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “I know. It sucks.”

Destiny had suddenly wanted to sleep, to make the day go away. She had remembered the hurt on Hefin’s face when she sent him away with Lacey, and as soon as she did, she remembered holding Sarah’s hand while she wept in the ICU.

She needed sleep.

She had made to leave again, then impulsively leaned over and kissed Sam on the cheek.

“What’s that for?”

“For yelling at everyone to take good care of Sarah.”

“I yelled at you, too.”

“Yeah, but I’m used to it.”

“We really haven’t figured anything out here, Desbaby.”

“I know. We will. We always do.”

They’d sat together, just being quiet together, for what seemed liked a long time. Then Sam’d said “Where’s POS Limo?”

“Probably in the back. If Lacey drove, she can never make it into the garage. If Hefin drove, no way.”

“You and Dad were the only ones who could really maneuver that limo. Learning to drive on it scarred me for life. I’ll never drive anything bigger than a compact.”

Then she’d hauled herself out of Sam’s Accord and into her dark house. When she went into the kitchen to get herself a drink of water before dropping into what she’d hoped would be a long and dreamless sleep, she’d found the plate, wrapped in aluminum foil, on the counter.

She’d lifted off the sticky note, instantly recognizing Betty’s schoolgirl script.

Take the brownie off the plate before you put it under the broiler for a few minutes to heat this up. In the morning you can tell me how Sarah’s doing
.

The plate had a giant slice of Betty’s meat loaf. Extra glaze. Canned green beans.
The brownie was wrapped in plastic wrap and was the kind with the white chocolate chips in it.

It turned out she’d had a few more tears left.

She’d wolfed down the meat loaf in giant bites, sitting in her father’s creaky leather recliner.

I hope you’re looking after Sarah, Dad
.

Then,
I don’t know what to do
.

Finally,
I love him, too. But isn’t that about the biggest mess ever. As you’d say
.

Now, she was surrounded by Hefin and Des smell, her eyes gritty and dry, clanking and pounding vibrating the vinyl windows in her bedroom.

She dragged herself to a sitting position. Dragged herself to the shower. About halfway through, she experienced a singular jolt of panic, remember that she had a
job
just after she remembered it was Saturday morning.

She’d showed up at Hefin’s place Thursday night.

She would have to find a way to call him today, thank him for talking to Carrie, for bringing POS Limo back with Lacey.

She wasn’t even sure where her POS phone was this morning. Lacey probably had her keys. She’d shoved her wallet into her pocket before she and Hefin had left for the hospital. It felt her life was in little pieces, scattered across everything.

She rubbed her soap over her neck, her armpits, her breasts, felt the sensitive sting where Hefin’s whiskers had scraped. She slid the bar down over her belly and suds ran between her legs. She eased the watery suds down with her hand, gently over her labia, which were tender.

He’d been here
, she thought.
Everywhere
.

She put the soap down and rinsed. That was the thing, making love with Hefin was having him everywhere, all at once.

She rested her cheek against the mauve pink tiles of the shower surround.

The thing is, she had
wanted
Hefin with her at the hospital. When she wasn’t completely freaking out about Sarah, she was thinking of Hefin. Because she was so physically uncomfortable at the hospital, she especially thought of how good his body felt against hers. How good her body felt near him.

She loved how he always submitted to her touching him. From that very first time at the park, how he closed his eyes and let her put her hands on him. He was easy to
spoil, and Des liked spoiling people. He didn’t push back against it, he didn’t question it.

He let her be herself.

It seemed, too, she let him be himself. She let him break open against her and show her his hurts and sweet dirtiness and tea-making.

He told her she was noble and that people were better having known her.

She knew though, she
knew
he needed to go. And more than ever, she needed to stay. She couldn’t imagine herself anywhere but here. Once, in high school, she had read a poem about how before the speaker in the poem had been to Paris, that Paris was simply a blank canvas and when the speaker imagined herself in Paris, she imagined being glued to the middle of the canvas—blankness all around her.

Of course, then once she had been to Paris, the canvas filled in—the curling linoleum of the cafe floors, the smells from a certain cheese shop when it propped its doors open.

When she thought of what Hefin had told her of Aberaeron, she could see
him
standing by the shore, the colors of the village houses and shops, the blue paint of the inn, his parents’ garden. But when she tried to imagine herself in those places, she was cut out and glued on a blank canvas.

Except, when she was with him, the only thing she saw in him was her.

That had never happened. That had never been true. With anybody.

She usually just saw the good parts of themselves when she looked at the people she loved.

Somehow, Hefin showed her the best parts of herself.

It was pretty great, actually. She didn’t realize she had so many best parts.

Maybe if she hadn’t just started a job, and Sarah hadn’t just been admitted to the hospital, if she still had her savings, she could give him a chance to settle in with his parents, then have a reason to take her first plane ride all the way to Wales. Let him show her Aberaeron, London, those unimaginable places in the world until part of her canvas filled in.

Then, she would have to come back, and they’d call and email until they couldn’t stand it. Then he’d visit her here, or maybe they’d meet in Chicago for a week, making love in a hotel and taking their distorted picture in the shiny surface of The Bean, like pictures she’d seen posted on friends’ profile pages.

Then he’d go back.

She’d cry.

Write more emails, coordinate more video chats across the time differences, when they could.

Then, some awful day, they’d know.

The scar would be tender forever.

She switched cheeks so the other one could cool against the tile. But even if they simply said good-bye, now, would the cut be any less deep?