To See You Again (34 page)

"I miss you, too. I almost did the same thing
myself," I said, gazing at him hopefully, but Beck didn't respond. He was
clearly in his own world.

"Telling my Mom. Ugh. That was the worst. She really
loves you, Rachel." He shook his head, and I pictured Lydia taking in the news.
The thought of her disappointment in me was almost too much to take.

"Well, the feeling was mutual, Beck. I'm so sorry
I've screwed everything up," I said. Much to my embarrassment tears started
pouring down my face. I'd promised myself I wouldn't cry. Maybe for Beckett
things weren't completely real yet, and soon he'd hate me for good, but for me,
it was all hitting like an avalanche. At first he went to reach for me, but
then he pulled back, retracting his hand before it reached mine. He stood
abruptly.

"I can't do this, Rachel. I can't comfort you—not
over this. I'll take the stuff if that's what you want." He stacked the boxes
one on top of the other, easing them off the table. I wiped my face and did the
best I could to calm down. His expression was so pained, like he was fighting
tears, too. "I still love you, and I want the best for you. I guess that makes
me a sucker." His voice was barely audible.

"No, that's what makes you good and kind," I'd
replied.

*** *** ***

I pull out of the memory and snap myself back into
the present with Vanessa. I tell her how he insisted on giving me his old
R.E.M. t-shirt, the one I always wore to bed at his place, and how, for reasons
I haven't figured out yet, I slept in it that night.

"That's not the worst part."

"Oh, gosh, Rachel. What else happened?"

As much as Vanessa didn't favor Beckett much, I
can tell she isn't rejoicing in his pain.

"Right before he left, he told me he wanted me to
be happy. He said he hoped I could find somebody I felt comfortable enough
letting into my heart."

"Holy s-h-i-t, Rach." Vanessa almost sounds as
floored as I feel. "It's like he knows or something."

"Knows what?" I snap. "Don't say that!"

"Take it easy. I don't mean he knows about Collin.
I just mean it sounds like he gets how you couldn't open your heart fully to
him."

"I feel so guilty," I mutter. "Should I have told
him I have feelings for someone else?"

"No way!"

"Really?" I feel both relieved and confused at how
confident she sounds.

"If you'd told him it would've been about your conscience,
not his feelings.
You
might've felt better for having been honest, but
it wouldn't have gotten
him
anywhere. He'd probably just feel more
betrayed than he already does. Who needs that?"

"I guess you're right. Maybe some part of me
wants
him to be mad at me? I kept thinking how he could've taken the opportunity to
really punish me, but he didn't. He's such a good person. I feel awful, but I
know ending it was the right thing for me, you know? Which probably just means
I'm a lunatic." Vanessa doesn't answer and in the background I hear crying
transform into screaming. "Sounds like you're in demand, my dear."

"Yep, I better go. Maddie is definitely having a
meltdown."

"Well, good luck!"

"You, too. I expect details!"

"Bye!"

"Bye!"

My car phone system announces the end of the call
and the music resumes full blast. I take deep breaths, trying to center myself
into the here and now. A few minutes later, I turn onto my street. As I pull into
my garage I see Collin's Prius parked out front. He's early. I'm late.
Again
.
I guess things really have changed.

Collin

Rachel drives up and waves at me as she pulls into
her one-car garage.

"Sorry I'm late! I was coming from a meeting in
Elmhurst." She's wildly grabbing things out of her car, balancing her keys,
phone and coffee thermos in one hand.

"Let me help you." I sling her messenger bag over
my shoulder and snag the coffee thermos before she can protest. "We aren't in
any kind of hurry, so please take your time. I was just checking email until
you got here."

"OK, thanks. C'mon in." She holds the door for me
and I ease past her, setting her things down in the kitchen. "I'm gonna go
change," she calls out to me. She still sounds frenzied and I wonder if it's
me, or work or both.

"No prob," I answer, purposefully making my voice
as calm as possible.

She emerges a moment later. "Jeans are fine,
right?"

"Rachel, anything you feel comfortable in is
fine." She scans my face briefly and I smile sincerely in affirmation. It
crosses my mind that I should say something more—something comforting, but the
right words don't make it to my lips in time. She retreats to her bedroom and a
few moments later I realize I'm nervously pacing. I guess she isn't the only
one. I force myself to come to an abrupt stop. I inhale deeply closing my eyes.
1…2…3… I exhale and open them again. Feeling only slightly more relaxed, I
stroll around her living room and notice that unlike the last time I was here,
all the pictures of her and Beckett are gone. I stop at her bookcase, browsing the
titles, when I spot a tall black guitar case wedged between the shelf and the
wall. I touch the top—it's covered in dust.

"We gotta problem, Rachel," I call out, feigning
urgency. She appears almost immediately wearing her dress top from work and a
pair of tight fitting jeans.

"What?" She sounds legitimately panicked and I
almost feel bad for teasing her.

"There's like an inch of dust on your guitar
case." I hold out my index finger to her. "How do you explain that?"

Her expression shifts from alarmed to annoyed instantaneously.
She rolls her eyes. "Easy. I never play it and I don't have a maid." She disappears
again into her bedroom.

I carefully and quietly extract the guitar from
its case and place it across my lap while I wait for her on the couch. She
materializes a few minutes later, having swapped her worktop for a light purple
button-down shirt and has released her hair from her up-do, allowing it to now
cascade past her shoulders. "I like your hair down," I say. She ignores me, and
points at her guitar on my lap.

"Oh hell no, Collin!"

"I'll counter that with a hell yes. I vote for
beer and pizza—and
you
providing the musical entertainment." She sits
down next to me and I notice her perfume immediately. I have a flashback to her
kissing me a few weeks ago and for a split second I lose all sense of my
present time and place. She's got me by the jugular and she doesn't have the
first clue about it.

"No way," she says, shaking her head emphatically.
"It has literally been years since I played."

"If that's true, that is a complete tragedy." I smile
at her and set the guitar aside, cutting her a break. She stares at it for a
minute and then looks back at me. "Can I ask why?"

"No time, I guess." She shrugs and looks away.

"Promise me you'll play again for me sometime. I
can't imagine a world without Raven singing it." She blushes and immediately I
realize me error. "Sorry, old habit. I know it's Rachel now."

She nods. "No big deal." Silence descends again, and
I'm feeling like crap for giving her such a hard time and for screwing up her
name. This night is off to a stellar start, thanks to me. She breaks the
silence saying, "I do like the beer and pizza idea, though…and
maybe
I
could be convinced to play a chord or two, but only after quite a few
cervezas
."

"Let's get drinking, then!" I cheer.

She laughs. "You're a jackass, Collin."

"So I hear…let me order us up some food. Is it
cool if we just stay here?" I stand up and walk over to her kitchen counter
where my phone is.

"Sounds wonderful. I'm beat. This week sucked."

"Well then, put your feet up and let me handle it
from here," I tell her. I watch as she relaxes immediately and seems to melt
into the couch. I pull up the menu from a local place and gaze at her from the
kitchen. I feel like I'm home.

*** *** ***

We eat pizza and drink beer until we're both
feeling full and buzzed. Rachel's stereo plays softly in the background and I
marvel at how it feels like so much time has passed and like none at all, all
at the same time. I say as much and she gazes at me.

She shakes her head. "Still trying to get me to
play that guitar, are you?"

"Oh you'll play it. You know you want to," I
tease, shifting closer to her on the couch. I rest my head on my arm on the top
of the sofa and angle myself toward her.

"What about your art, Collin?" She moves on the
couch so her body position mirrors mine.

I shrug and she looks disappointed, and so I
decide to tell her about something I'd been keeping on the down low. "I did
start this thing for my mom, but I didn't get it finished in time." She
appraises me for a minute.

"What was it?"

"A painting. When she was really sick, toward the
end, she kept talking about this place in Michigan she went to as a kid. I
found some old photos of her there, and I used them to make this painting of
her playing on the beach as a little girl."

"Sounds beautiful, and moving. I hope you'll
finish it."

I hold my hands out to her. "I worked on it last
night."

She takes one in hers. "I like seeing your hands
like this, all paint stained." I smile and thread my fingers through hers.
"Reba told me that you and your mom had a bad fight right before she died."

I close my eyes. "We did."

"She forgives you, you know," Rachel whispers, and
I open my eyes to look at her.

"What makes you think so?"

"Because she loved you, Collin…and fighting about
your dad? That was part of your relationship with her. She knew that. You know
it, too." She touches my chin gently. "Do you forgive
her
?"

 I shut my eyes again and then force myself to
reopen them. Talking about this stuff is so hard for me, but I want to give
myself to Rachel, all of me. I locked Leighton out and I hurt her deeply
because of it. After my mother died all I could think about were all the things
that went unsaid between us. I can't do this anymore. I have to be open with
the people I love; no matter how difficult and foreign it feels. I clear my
throat. "I think so…most days, anyway. There's a lot I don't understand, but
I'm becoming more OK with that, I think. I guess I have to be OK with it,
right?" She stares directly into my eyes and I feel that same sense of safety
around her I did so many years ago.

"Have you read all the letters from your dad yet?"

"Yeah. Some of them are pretty amazing. I'd like
to show you more sometime." She nods enthusiastically. "Other ones…let's just
say I understand better why my mom didn't want to give them to me as a kid. When
he wasn't doing well, sometimes things got really dark for him. That used to
scare me a lot, but now I think I get it more." Saying this aloud makes me
think about what Rachel said about forgiving my mom. Acknowledging this much
feels like progress.

Rachel's quiet for a moment and then she says, "Everything
has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may
be in, therein to be content."

I let her words sink in. "I like that. Who are you
quoting?"

"Helen Keller, but I think the message transcends
disability. I interpret it more to mean realizing our dark periods, our
struggles, they're part of us too, and we have to love all of ourselves."

I think about how much I've feared my own mind
betraying me for so much of my life, and it has only been recently that I've
come to see it differently.

 I look down at our linked fingers. "I've thought
about how in some ways my dad's illness was a good thing. I'll never forget it
killed him, but not all of it was bad. It helped him to create, too—it wasn't
just when he was well that he was brilliant. In fact, some of his best, most
interesting paintings were when he was kind of manic."

"Do you still worry about that?"

"Becoming bipolar?"

She nods, her expression solemn.

"Not really. I've been to doctors—that isn't what's
going on with me. I've never had a manic episode and I probably would've by now
if it were going to happen. You know though, because of everything I've been
through, I've come to realize things were different for my dad. There was a
long time when no one knew what was wrong, and because of that, he never got
help, or medication, and he had very little support. My mom was in total
denial. They knew a lot less back then, than they do now. I can't help but
think if he'd had any of that, you know, any of what I've had, he'd still be
here today."

Rachel nods in agreement. She's never been judgmental
when I've talked about my dad and his illness. She doesn't act afraid, like so
many people have.

I push myself to tell her more. "I guess I do
worry sometimes about getting really depressed again, though. I still have days
that are pretty hard, and sometimes I fear they'll stretch into weeks and
months, and I'll be right back where I was years ago. If I think about it too
much, it scares the shit out of me. Losing Mom has felt like a step back, but
I'm hanging in there."

"What's it like when it gets really bad?" Rachel
takes her free hand and rubs the top of mine that's joined with hers. Her
caress is warm and soft and I ache for more of it. She looks up at me. "Will you
tell me about it?"

I pull my lower lip into my mouth and bite down
hard, and then give her a slight nod before exhaling a long, slow breath. "When
I was younger, before I had a sense of what was wrong, it was just like this
ever-present force, like a darkness, sort of. It was with me all the time, and
honestly, I can hardly remember a period when it wasn't just there. When I got
older, and things got a lot worse it was more, like um, like a parasite." I
take a deep breath and she gently squeezes my hand. I tighten my grip in return,
holding onto her as I continue. "It was like this thing that lived inside me
and no matter what I said, or did, or even thought, it would dominate…like an
evil, hateful running commentary on my whole life. I'd try to fight it, but I
sort of believed it, you know? It told me I was worthless, and I agreed. Then,
over time, it felt like it had sucked the life out of me. It was like
everything around me was just muted, the color drained out…and I was tired. God
Rachel, I was so fucking tired. I couldn't bring myself to care about anything
anymore. To just give into the darkness felt like the least exhausting option;
so for a while I did."

"Then Reba and doctors helped you?" she asks.

For some reason this makes me laugh a little, like
it could all be that simple, but in a really basic way, I guess it was. If Reba
hadn't stepped in, there's no way I'd be here now. I nod and try to put it into
words. "It's been a long process." I look away from her and into my kitchen,
remembering Reba trying to get me to eat, to talk, to do anything. When she
finally did, I think we all felt like some milestone had been reached, but I
had just barely crossed the start line.

Rachel is staring at me intently and I continue
on. "When I started to feel less tired the first thing I remember experiencing
was this wave of anger. It seems so backward to think about it now, but I
wanted to blame someone. I felt out of control and scared, and it had to be
someone's fault. I had some easy targets in my life, you know?" She nods. "I
blamed my dad for dying, my mom for being cold, Victor for being such an
asshole…the list goes on and on.  Someone was at fault for my depression.
That's what I thought, anyway, and I was going to get to the bottom of it. And
then one day I had this client who got over-the-top angry about some minor,
stupid, forgettable mistake we'd made. I can't even remember what it was, but
it was the kind of thing that would've barely warranted a comment from any
other client we had. This guy though, man, he was obsessed with blaming a
specific person. What seemed to matter most to him was punishment. Someone had
to be held accountable. I refused to turn anyone over to this guy, the way he
wanted, and in the end we lost the account. Losing the company was…whatever,
just business, but I kept thinking and thinking about this guy for weeks, and
that's when it hit me—I was him! This constant need to blame was keeping me
sicker than just about anything else in my life. I had to stop it somehow."

Rachel gives me a look of rapt interest. "How did
you?"

"Well, I'm not perfect about it. I still blame
myself a lot, and other people occasionally, when things go wrong—like an
instinct, you know? Or a habit, maybe? Anyway, I just try to let go when I can,
be forgiving…look for the good," I say, my voice drifting.