One Day Soon (35 page)

“You look good, Imi. Happy almost,” he observed, startling me.

I nervously tucked my hair behind my ears, not quite meeting his eyes. “Thanks,” I muttered.

“Divorce seems to agree with you,” Chris quipped nastily and I relaxed, more comfortable with his bitterness than I was with his complimentary observations.

“Okay, you have your shoes. Is there anything else you need?” I asked, not responding to his obvious bait. Chris wanted an emotional reaction from me. He would poke and prod until he felt like I showed him something.
Anything.

“No. I guess that’s it,” he responded shortly.

I felt the guilt. Chris wasn’t a bad guy. He deserved a lot more than a wife who had loved him barely and married him because it seemed to be expected.

I held the door open for him, the night air making me shiver. As Chris walked outside I couldn’t help but give him something.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

Chris stilled for a moment. Hesitated.

And then walked down the porch steps without saying a word.

It was for the best anyway.

I closed the door and turned, nearly jumping out of my skin when I saw Yoss standing there, a strange look on his face.

“The ex,” he stated and I nodded. “He seemed upset.”

“He came for his bowling shoes. No big deal,” I said evasively.

“I can tell it’s not. To you.” He watched me, his green eyes dark. “I can’t imagine loving you so much and knowing you didn’t love me back.”

The guilt I had felt only minute earlier overwhelmed me.

“I’m glad,” Yoss went on.

“You’re glad about what?” I asked.

“That you never gave your heart to anyone else.”

Never.

Yoss cleared his throat and looked away, leaving me shaken. “I’m pretty tired, if it’s okay, I think I’m going to turn in.”

That was it. He dropped that bomb and then left me with the aftermath. He was so confusing.

“Oh, yeah, that’s fine. Of course. There are clean towels in the bathroom if you want a shower. Though I’m pretty sure the only shampoo I have smells like berries. Nothing manly I’m afraid.” I was blathering again.

Yoss shrugged. “Berries are fine. Thanks. I’ll, uh, I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Okay,” I said softly as he walked back down the hall towards the guest room. He hesitated before going inside, his hand on the doorknob before going inside.

I listened to the sound of the click as he closed the door between us.

I barely slept that night.

Yoss’s familiar screams kept me from dreaming. His nightmares still plagued him. And I still could only listen helplessly while his demons devoured him one memory at a time.

I stood outside his door, my palm pressed against the wood, wishing I could go inside and hold him the way I used to. But I knew I couldn’t. Not yet.

One day I hoped he wouldn’t lock the door between us.

But time was running out and I was afraid that no matter how tightly I held on, it wasn’t enough. That he would always slip through my fingers.

Maybe after all these years I was still just that girl standing in the rain. Waiting for a boy who would never come.

He would always run from what I wanted so desperately to give him. I could scream my love, but he wouldn’t hear me.

Hopeless, my cries tangled with his in that dark, lonely night.

Fifteen years ago

“C
heck it out, Yoss! It’s the Kimber doll from Jem and the Holograms! I had one just like this!” I ran my finger over the smooth face of the toy.

My mother never had the money, or the inclination, to buy me new toys. Most of my favorite things as a child were leftovers from someone else. My Jem and the Holograms dolls had been given to me by some distant relative who had lost interest in them.

But to me, they were the most amazing things in the world.

The table was piled high with someone else’s junk. Broken model airplanes. Alvin and the Chipmunk glasses. It all looked like treasure to me.

On a whim, Yoss had decided we should spend the morning at a local flea market housed out of an old factory at the edge of town. The days were shorter, the air was colder and it was becoming hard to stay warm at The Pit.

More and more people seemed to be crowding within its walls. I felt claustrophobic. And afraid of the staring eyes and noisy whispers that surrounded me every morning when I woke up and every night as I fell asleep.

Last night he had left me for longer than he had ever done before. Hours went by and I couldn’t fall asleep. A man was shouting at a woman who sobbed loudly only a few feet away. I tried not to listen to their argument, but when he began to throw things, I pulled the smelly blanket over my head, terrified.

Last night wasn’t the first time I thought about leaving before Yoss had a chance to return. I had entertained the idea briefly over the last six months. It flitted in and out of my head before taking root. Because I’d never be able to leave Yoss. He was my anchor.

Last night was different. The shadows were darker. The terror was stronger. The noises louder.

It was the first time that I had allowed the idea of leaving Yoss and running home feel like a very real possibility.

That’s what fear did. It destroyed hope.

And when Yoss was gone it was all too easy to lose it.

I loved Yoss.

But I hated the things he did. I wanted to hit Manny every time he came for him. He would wait with his arms crossed, a look of barely concealed impatience on his fleshy features.

“Come on, Yoss, we’re going to be late,” he would say, giving me a smile that would have been kind. But I knew better.

Manny was the worst kind of evil. The kind that preyed on the desperate. The kind that smiled all the while he killed you.

He was killing Yoss. By making him believe that to sell his body was his only option.

“You don’t have to go, Yoss. We don’t need that money,” I allowed myself to whisper as I watched my boyfriend put on cologne for men who didn’t care what he smelled like.

I felt sick.

So damn sick.

Yoss wouldn’t look at me. He never did when Manny came. I saw his shame so clearly.

“I’ll be back later. We can get breakfast in the morning,” he had said.

“I don’t want breakfast! I don’t want you to go!” I had shouted. Manny heard me. He frowned, looking annoyed.

“Yoss. We’ve got to go now. Ray and Dean are waiting,” Manny all but snarled.

“Yoss,” I begged. I pleaded. I would get on my hands and knees if it would mean he’d stay.

Yoss’s eyes were wet but they would never meet mine. “I love you, Imi,” was all he said.

Then he left.

And I began to question his promises. His love. His devotion to our future.

I found myself being jealous of the anonymous men in forgotten corners who stole parts of my Yoss that I had yet to know. It was ridiculous to feel that way. Disturbed that I could desire anything he shared with those faceless monsters.

I loathed myself for hating Yoss for how he had chosen to survive.

But in the end, the love was so much stronger.

And I didn’t leave.

Of course I couldn’t.

I was tied to him in ways my seventeen-year-old heart didn’t understand.

Later when he finally crawled under the blankets, I could feel him trembling as he took me in his arms. I hated myself all over again for the reprehensible thoughts that had consumed me only hours earlier.

Lightning had flickered in the distance. We didn’t speak. There was no need too. His face had been streaked with dirt and tears.

I wiped the blood away from his busted lip. I didn’t ask him what happened. His ghosts were his own.

I knew he’d never share them anyway.

I pressed my ear against his chest and listened to the steady cadence of his heart. Beat. Beat. Beat.

If I listened hard enough I wondered if I could hear it breaking.

He smelled like cigarette smoke and something else that I couldn’t quite place. It smelled soiled. Wrong.

He shuddered with each intake of breath as though he wasn’t sure he should still be breathing.

He couldn’t run fast enough. The demons always caught him.

“I’m sorry if I woke you up,” he had whispered. I felt his lips in my hair. He touched me only as much as he could handle. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Not too much or he’d curl into a ball and disappear.

Just lips. Fingers pressed on skin.

“You didn’t. I can’t sleep until you’re here.” I had tried to reposition myself so I could look at him but he held me still.

“Don’t, Imogen. Please don’t.” He was hiding. So I did the only thing I could do. I crouched in his darkness with him.

In the lonely, pitiful darkness full of things neither of us wanted to see. Full of sounds that were painful to our ears.

“I thought about the beach tonight. I imagined sitting in the sand with you,” I had told him.

“I always picture it as this infinite thing. Going on and on forever.” His voice had quivered even as he had tried to hide it. “We’ll see it together. We’ll sit in the sand.” He wanted so much. And he hoped. Always, always hoped. It was the most beautiful thing about him.

Even when real life came crashing down around us with its brutality, he held onto a fantasy with battered fingers, waiting for it to become our truth.

I nodded my head, not wanting to give voice to lies. But Yoss relaxed, so I continued to speak quietly.

“I don’t even know how to swim,” I admitted softly, laughing a little.

“Me either. I guess we should figure out a way to learn,” Yoss replied and I felt his smile press into my skin.

“Or maybe we should just stay out of the water,” I suggested.

“No way. I want to swim in the ocean…” Yoss’s voice drifted off, relaxing into me as he fell asleep. His body battered and bruised. But his heart—his heart was whole. For that one moment.

I ran my hand along the curve of his fingers. Up and down his arm. “We’ll go far, far away, Yoss. Away from everything here. We’ll make a new life. Just for us.”

I fed him dreams I was terrified would never be realized. I used the words to soothe both of us. And it worked.

For a time.

Until the nightmares came. I couldn’t take those away.

He woke up that morning, not the Yoss that had clung to me desperately in his sleep, but a man who wanted to believe that his world could change in an instant.

He insisted on giving me all the happiness he could. So that morning when he suggested going to the flea market, I agreed, preferring the smile to the tears.

With his dirty money in his pocket, his lip crusted over and barely healing, we sifted through piles of unwanted toys and clothes. Things people were so eager to get rid of.

Sort of like us.

But it was fun.

“I can’t believe it!” I squealed a little too loudly, holding up the old doll with bright red hair and shimmery, silver pants.