True (20 page)

“No, you don’t,” I told him, flatly. “But it’s meaningless to me. I have no use for it.”

I climbed out of the car and slammed the door shut, my lip trembling, teeth chattering.

Without looking back, I ran into the house. My dad was standing there, waiting, clearly having been watching.

“I hope you’re happy!” I screamed at him. “Tyler just broke up with me, and it’s partly your fault!” Maybe that wasn’t fair. Tyler had come to the conclusion we couldn’t be together before he’d pulled in the driveway, but I don’t think my father’s threat to cut me off had helped the situation.

Running up the doors, still in my muddy boots, I slammed my door shut as hard as I could, locking it. With a scream, I slapped a pillow off my bed and onto the floor. Then I screamed again and threw another pillow. I did it again and again until there was nothing on the bed but the fitted sheet, while my dad pounded on my door. When my throat was raw from screaming, I fell on the torn-apart bed and sobbed.

I cried until my eyes were swollen and tears ran down my cheek, soaking my sleeve. I cried until I was choking on my own mucus and my head was throbbing and there was no liquid coming from my eyes anyway, and I was just a snuffling, painful, congested sobbing mess.

I cried until I heard my father and Susan talking in the hallway.

“I should take the door off. I need to talk to her,” Dad said to Susan, his voice anxious.

“Leave her be. She’s had her heart broken. Don’t you remember having your first love break your heart?”

“No. I married my first love.”

Which only made me start crying all over again.

Then I tortured myself by looking at all the pictures on my phone of Tyler. There weren’t many, because he hated having his picture taken, but there was one of him in bed, asleep, his face relaxed, his chest bare. I loved that picture. It showed him as tough, yet vulnerable. I clutched the phone to my chest and stared out my bedroom window into the black night, the hurt so overwhelming it took effort to breathe.

When my mother died, when I saw my father crying as he came out of that hospital room for the last time, and I realized what had happened, I bawled into my grandmother’s arms in the waiting area, as nurses stopped to whisper words of comfort and other people around the hospital shot sympathetic glances our way. I remember thinking that this was wrong, this couldn’t be right, that we couldn’t live in a world that was so mean, that moms shouldn’t just die. As my grandmother picked me up and rocked me on the hard chair in that waiting area, tears on her cheeks, her scent of rosewater surrounding me, she had murmured to me that the world had stopped for a moment and gone dark, but tomorrow, the sun would rise all over again. It would do that every day, until one day we were okay.

And it did.

So I picked up the phone and called my grandmother.

The next day, I boarded a bus to Florida to spend the week before classes with her and my grandfather.

Chapter Twenty

January was cold and dark. All the way around. It was icy winds, slippery sidewalks, five o’clock sunsets, and a hole in my chest that couldn’t be filled no matter how many Fritos I stuffed down my throat.

I got up every day and I went to class and I studied and I hung out with my roommates. Sometimes I even laughed. I was determined not to let Tyler ruin my life. I was determined to recover, be normal.

But sometimes I also found myself doing strange things. I took the bus to Tyler’s neighborhood and I walked down his street, knowing I could get caught, but not caring. I stood at the corner and I looked in, seeing his mother passed out on the couch and catching a glimpse of Jayden in the kitchen.

I walked away, dissatisfied with my voyeurism.

I started to send texts, then deleted them.

I walked alone, a lot, in the dark, prompting Kylie to express concern. But I liked the cold, the angry, howling wind. I liked how my cheeks stung and my lips cracked and my eyes teared up from the cold. I blew my breath out and watched it and listened to it, the quick huff, that illusion of steam. I liked the way my nose went numb and my toes went numb and my fingers went numb in my pockets. I felt alive, I felt like my body was slicing through the night, through the darkness, warm, blood pumping.

I refused to listen when Kylie and Jess tried to tell me what was going on with Tyler. I refused to go to Nathan’s.

Yet I found myself online searching databases, finding Tyler’s mug shot from his arrest, and printing it out. I carried it in my notebook, his tight sullen face staring out at me when I flipped through my calculus notes.

Once on campus I thought I saw him, and I ducked behind a tree, feeling like I was going to throw up.

I scratched out the
R
on my tattoo with a black marker, then washed it off three seconds later.

And every day the sun rose, and every day I healed a little more.

I started tutoring at the local elementary school, working with at-risk kids. I quit my work-study job, deciding that the bookstore didn’t need yet one more middle-class kid making eight bucks an hour. My time could be better spent at the grade school and the shelter.

One time in late January, I saw Easton in the hallway. I hadn’t even realized I was at his school, but it wasn’t that far from the house, so it made sense. I called out to him, ridiculously relieved and excited to see him. His head turned and his eyes widened. Then he bolted away from me, shoving another kid to get down the hall, his lip trembling.

I stopped, crushed.

***

On Valentine’s Day I called my dad. We hadn’t spoken since I had left for Florida. Six weeks was a long time to go without contact. I had sent him texts so he would know I was okay, but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to call him. He hadn’t called me. It was a pattern we needed to break, immediately, or we were going to do it forever.

“Rory?” he answered, sounding anxious.

“Hi.”

“How are you, sweetheart?”

“I’m okay.” I was in the study lounge, the only person there, as usual. Kylie was out with Nathan, and Jessica had gone out to the bars with Robin. I had declined an invite, preferring to distract myself with studying.

“I’ve been worried about you.”

I put my feet on the coffee table and inspected my slippers, sighing. “Look, Dad, we need to quit doing this. Ever since Mom died, you and I have avoided talking about the hard stuff. We just ignore our feelings and it’s not good. I really am having a hard time right now and I need to know that you’re there for me.”

“Of course I’m there for you. I just wanted to give you space.”

“If you could be in my face about me not seeing Tyler, you can be a little more in my face about making sure I’m okay. That’s all.”

“You’re right. You’re absolutely right. It’s hard for me to . . . share how I’m feeling.”

“I know. I am pretty much a carbon copy of you. But I don’t want us to be strangers to each other. We’re all we’ve got. I mean, well, you have Susan, but you’re my father. My family.”

“You’re the most important person in the world to me, and I want you to know that.”

It was good to hear. It was what I needed to hear.

“How were your grandparents? I should call them more often.”

“They’re good.” My mother’s parents were more like her, talkative and full of energy and life. Even in their seventies, they were in about seven different clubs and activities down in Naples. “It was nice to see them. And I think I gained five pounds the week I was there.”

“You could use the meat on your bones. You got my scrawny build.”

“Thanks a lot. I thought thin was in.” I crossed my ankles, feeling a sense of peace settle over me. “So what are your Valentine’s plans? It’s nine o’clock. I hope I’m not interrupting foreplay.”

“Rory!”

I laughed. It was almost like I could hear my dad blushing.

“I have to accept you’re not a little girl anymore, don’t I?”

“It looks that way,” I told him. “I grew up when you weren’t looking.”

“Damn. And I can still remember when you would bring home Valentine’s Day cards from school. One was a clock that said “Just in Time, to be Mine.”

I grinned. The man was getting sappy. Clearly we should not go six weeks without talking ever again.

“Rory. I’m sorry about Tyler. I really am.”

My chest tightened. “Thanks.”

Thirty minutes later, I said goodbye and went down to my room, ready for a studying change of scenery. I opened the door and flicked on the light. It took me a second to realize the room wasn’t empty. Jessica was on her bed, head thrown back in pleasure, a guy between her thighs. When he lifted his head to see what was happening, I realized it was Bill, Nathan’s roommate.

“Oh, geez, sorry! I didn’t know you were in here. I’ll go back upstairs.” Embarrassed at what I’d seen, I went straight back to the lounge. I crammed a bunch of quarters in the vending machine and bought myself a bag of chips, trying not to feel envious that I wasn’t spending my Valentine’s Day that way.

I’d been fine, all day. Really okay.

Now I had a pit in my gut and a desperate desire to check my phone every three seconds for a text I knew was not coming.

Twenty minutes later, the door opened and Jessica came in, wearing her pajama pants and a giant sweatshirt. Her hair was tousled. “Hey.”

“Hey. Where’s Bill?”

“I made him go home. I don’t want him to get the wrong idea about what this was.”

“What was this?” I asked, curious, as she flopped down next to me and drew her knees up to her chest.

“Just bored, and he has been flirting with me for weeks. I wanted to have an orgasm and so I did. I told him straight out I wasn’t going to screw him.” She made a face. “Don’t judge me. I get enough of that as it is.”

I shrugged. “I’m not judging you. I figure as long as you’re honest with the guy, you have a right to do whatever you want.” That kind of casual sex wasn’t for me, but if she could handle it, more power to her.

“Good. Because I get so sick of slut shaming, you know? It’s like a guy can fuck anyone he wants and no one says a word. But we’re not supposed to have physical urges at all. We’re supposed to want to have sex only because we’re in love, and the truth is, my body doesn’t seem to know the difference. It just knows it likes touchy.” She grinned at me. “Lots of touchy.”

“I envy you the touchy right now,” I told her honestly. It had been far too long since I had been touched.

But I also knew that I would never go backward. I wouldn’t undo what I had done with Tyler. I was never going to be able to emotionally distance myself from the people around me the way I had most of my life, and I didn’t want to. Being a loner was ultimately selfish, and if you never gave of yourself, you never got in return. The risk of being hurt was higher when you put yourself out there, but it was worth it.

My phone beeped to indicate a text.

My heart jumped and I grabbed it, a small seed of optimism planted.

It was from Kylie saying she wuv’d me.

Sweet, but not what I wanted.

I tossed my phone back down, disgusted with myself.

“He’s miserable,” Jessica said, quietly. “He looks like hell, you know. And he asks about you.”

“It doesn’t matter.” It didn’t. He had shattered my faith, my trust, my heart.

And yet the sun rose again the next day.

And I still loved him.

***

In March, Tyler’s mother overdosed and died. Jessica called to tell me and I sat there on my bed, in shock. “What? Oh my God. How?”

“Heroin. That black heroin they buy because it’s cheaper, only it’s way more dangerous.”

“Oh, no.” I closed my eyes. “Was she at home? Who found her?”

“Tyler. His brothers were still at school.”

I was grateful Jayden and Easton weren’t home, but I couldn’t imagine how Tyler had felt. How helpless and sad, and maybe in a small part of him, relieved. His mother’s suffering was over.

“She died last night. They’re burying her tomorrow.”

“That fast?”

“Yeah, they can’t afford to do a wake or anything.”

What a sad ending to a sad life. “I’m going to go. I have to,” I said.

“I think you should.” Jessica gave me the details, the time and the cemetery.

That night I went on another of my nocturnal walks, the weather still grim, still firmly in the grip of winter, the paths around campus filled with slushy, muddy snow that melted each day and iced over each night.

And for the first time in over two months, I gave in to the urge to text Tyler. I simply wrote

I’m sorry.

It said many things to me. I was sorry for his mother’s death, sorry for the reality of his life, sorry that I had been given so many more opportunities than he had. Sorry that I had screamed at him, sorry that for whatever reason, he couldn’t trust in my feelings for him. Sorry that my future no longer held him in it.

I didn’t know if he would answer me. But he did, immediately.

Thx. Me 2.

So he hadn’t deleted my number.

And I was entitled to read all the subtexts I wanted into that brief text. That “me, too” meant he was sorry not just for his mother, but for us.

Maybe that wasn’t logical. But I had learned that sometimes logical didn’t feel as good.

Chapter Twenty-one

I saw Tyler for the first time in two months, bent over his mother’s grave, his arm around Easton’s shoulders.

Jessica and I had borrowed Robin’s car. Kylie had gone with Nathan earlier. It was raining, a steady, drizzling cold mist. The snow had all melted, except for what clung to the curbs and the giant piles in parking lots. The ground was soft, wet, as we crossed the grass to reach the grave site. The attendance was low. There were Tyler and his brothers, Kylie and Nathan, their aunt Jackie, and a woman who I thought might be their next-door neighbor. That was it. Ten people, including Jess and me.

Without saying anything, we just slid into place beside Kylie, listening to the priest, who was softly speaking a prayer. When I looked down at the simple casket, I saw there was a picture on it of Tyler’s mom when she was much younger, when she had still been Dawn, a girl with dreams and a future. I was amazed to see her wide smile, to see the joy and life on her face, to see the care she’d taken with her hair, teasing it to enormous heights, her eyeliner a dramatic teal color. I thought maybe it was her senior portrait.

Jessica squeezed my hand, and I knew she was thinking the same thing. “I’m never touching that shit ever again,” she murmured to me. “Never.”

“Good.” I glanced over at Tyler, unable to resist, wondering if he had seen me.

He was looking right at me, and he gave me a nod of acknowledgement. He was dry-eyed, his expression closed. Easton was silent, too, but Riley was wiping at his eyes, and Jayden was openly crying. My heart broke for them.

When the priest was done, giving the sign of the cross over the casket, he turned to Tyler and Riley and spoke quietly to them for a minute. Then he moved off, giving the family their last moments alone with their mom.

But none of them lingered. Jess and I drifted back a little to give them privacy, but Riley immediately came over to us. He hugged me. “Thanks for coming. I appreciate it.” He nodded to Jessica. “Thanks.”

“I’m so sorry,” I told him. “I lost my mom, too. I know how hard it is.”

“Well, this wasn’t exactly unexpected. She was on borrowed time. But it’s still a kick in the gut.” Riley glanced over at his brothers. “Going to be hard, all the way around.”

“I’m sure. If I can help, just me know.”

“Thanks.” Riley patted my shoulder, then walked back.

I could hear Tyler and his aunt arguing. “Just let it go, Jackie. I swear to God, don’t do this right now or I will lose it.”

“I’m just saying, we should be able to press charges. Dealers shouldn’t be able to sell you bad shit.” Jackie was smoking a cigarette, wearing jeans and a nylon jacket, her hair up in a ponytail. She pointed at Tyler, her voice raising. “You know your mom could handle her shit, so for her to OD, it had to be bad stuff. Someone should pay for this.”

“Someone did pay for this. Jayden and Easton paid for this. They paid for every day of her addiction, and I don’t want to hear it. There is no one to blame here but her and her love of the little white pills.”

“Don’t talk bad about your mom when she’s barely cold.”

But Tyler just shook his head. “Jackie, I’m not doing this. I love you, but I’m not doing this.”

I felt like I was hearing something private I shouldn’t be hearing, so I went over to Jayden and gave him a hug. He had stopped crying, but his eyes were red and he was wiping his nose with the sleeve of his coat. I dug a tissue out of my purse and handed it to him.

“I miss you,” he told me, sounding every kind of miserable you could be.

“I miss you, too.” I did. He was a lesson in being grateful. He was funny and clever and one of the most genuine people I’d ever met. “If it’s okay with Tyler, you and I can hang out sometime. Just because Tyler and I aren’t together, doesn’t mean you and I can’t be friends.”

“Really?”

“Really. As long as it’s okay with Tyler.” I didn’t want him to think I was trying to infiltrate his family or win him back by using his brothers. I would die if he thought that.

Of course, I should have realized Jayden would ask Tyler immediately. “Tyler, is it okay?”

“Is what okay?” Tyler came over to us, giving me a brief smile, his hands in the front pockets of his jeans.

“Can I hang out with Rory sometime? She said we’re still friends even if you and her aren’t.”

“Of course you can.” Tyler looked at me, his eyes searching, earnest. “I would like to still be friends with Rory, too.”

Only if I had a heart of steel, which I didn’t. Maybe in six months or a year, but right now, I knew I wasn’t capable of just being his friend and not wishing every second that I was something more to him.

“We can be the kind of friends who care about each other, but never see each other or talk,” I told him, trying to be honest. Of course, that sounded much ruder than I intended.

But the corner of Tyler’s mouth turned up. “Only you, Rory.”

Only me.

“U, can you and Easton go wait in the car with Riley? I want to talk to Rory for a second.”

“Don’t be mean to her,” Jayden said, clearly figuring that must be the reason we were no longer together.

“I won’t,” Tyler said, annoyed. “Now go.”

“Well, I’m relieved you’re not going to be mean to me,” I said, fighting the urge to smile. It was good to see him, even under the awful circumstances. Even with the rain dampening my hair and seeping into my shirt from the gap of my coat collar. Even with him looking so solemn and damaged, the dark circles under his eyes prominent, angry slashes of bruised purple skin.

“I think I’ve been mean enough to you already. But I want to t
hank you for coming. That was really sweet of you.”

“I’m just sorry about your mom. I really am.” I hoped my voice conveyed my sincerity, that he could hear that I still cared about him. “What are you guys going to do?” I meant about the house, the future.

But he just shrugged. “We’ll manage. We’ll be fine.”

“If there’s anything I can do . . .” I started to say, but I trailed off. It sounded trite saying that to Tyler.

After a moment of silence, he spoke. “You look good,” he said, and his voice cracked. He cleared his throat, glancing over to the left, to the open grave. “Just as beautiful as I remember. I thought, you know, that maybe I had exaggerated in my mind what you looked like, but I didn’t. You’re beautiful, and I was a complete dick to break up with you on Christmas.” He swung back to stare intently at me. “I hope someday you can forgive me. It wasn’t that I didn’t love you. I did. I do. I love you. But . . .”

“I know.” I stopped him. I didn’t need to hear all this again. “I do forgive you. It doesn’t mean I don’t wish it was different though, because I do.”

“Are you . . . dating anyone or anything?”

Was he stupid? I made a face. “No. And I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re not you.” Idiot. “What about you? Seeing anyone?” I jammed my hands into my coat pockets, immediately sorry I had asked that. Why did I need to torture myself?

But he shook his head. “No.” He rubbed the stubble on his chin and I waited, recognizing the sign that he was trying to force words out. “Rory?”

“Yes?” Whatever he was going to say, it didn’t matter, because I already felt a hundred pounds lighter. Just seeing his face, reading in his eyes that he loved me, hearing him say it, was enough to fill that last hole in my heart with spackle. It was patched up, not perfect, but intact.

But then I saw what was dangling from his neck. It was the necklace I had given him for Christmas. I recognized the black rope chain and the dented metal with the typography letters stamped on to it. Except it didn’t read
TRUE
like it had when I’d placed it in that gift bag, wrapped in tissue paper. It read
TRUER
.

“What is that?” I asked, voice trembling, afraid I might suddenly cry. “Why is there an
R
on your necklace?”

“What?” Then he glanced down to where I was pointing, and he smiled softly. “Oh.
R
is for
Rory
.”

Oh, God.

“Jayden pointed out to me that your name starts with an
R
, and I realized that you belong on this necklace, right here, in this gift that you gave me. The best gift I’ve ever gotten.” He ran his callused thumb over the metal. “Next to my heart, where you belong.”

I did start crying. I couldn’t stop myself. I pulled my coat sleeve up with trembling fingers and turned my arm so he could see the tattoo on the back of my wrist. “So you’re always with me.”

Tyler stared at it, his jaw clenched. Then he said, “Oh, God, Rory, I love you. I shouldn’t tell you that, but I can’t . . .”

He lifted my wrist and he kissed the tattoo, staring deep into my eyes while his lips brushed across my flesh. Mist droplets were scattered all over his hair, and he caressed the inside of my arm. Then he murmured, “It wouldn’t be fair to ask you to be with me.”

That’s what I had been waiting to hear. I would have let it rain on me all day if those words were at the end of twelve hours. “Why don’t you give it a shot?”

“But your dad . . .”

“Will get over it. We’ve come to a new understanding.”

He laced his fingers through mine. “What do I have to offer you?” he asked, pleading.

“You’re my best friend. My English tutor. The guy who keeps me from becoming a lab recluse.” I shook my head at him. “But I’m not going to talk you into it. This one is up to you. We’ve proven that we can survive apart.”

I gave him just a second or two, watching the struggle on his face, then I whispered, “Good-bye, Tyler,” and started to walk away. I wouldn’t, couldn’t, be with a man, no matter how much I loved him, who wasn’t sure it was what he wanted. In some ways, the breakup had been good for me. It had given me a new appreciation for myself and the people in my life.

Even the ones who might not be able to be in it.

Ignoring my tears, I was all the way across the grass and to the street when I heard him yell, “Rory, wait!”

I turned and there he was, right behind me, reaching for me, pulling me into his embrace as he stared down intently at me. “Don’t go, please, God, don’t go.”

My heart swelled, but I shook my head. “You don’t mean that.”

“Yes, I do,” he said tenderly. “I don’t want to be without you. Not for another day. Not for another minute. I’ve been miserable without you. Opening that car door was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life, even if I thought it was the right thing to do.”

I kissed him. Hard. Wanting him to understand that none of that mattered. That what mattered was here, now, me and him and a promise to be the best we could, for ourselves, for each other.

“I love you,” he whispered in my ear. “And I’m never going to let you go.”

Then the horn blaring made me jump. We were still standing in the street by the cemetery and Riley had hit the car horn.

“Seriously?” Tyler said shooting an annoyed look at his brother. “What a jack-off.”

I smiled, giving a watery laugh. “Maybe we should discuss this somewhere else.”

“I don’t think there is really anything else to discuss.” Tyler cupped both of my cheeks with his hands and kissed me again, softer this time. “Except how happy I’m going to make you.”

“You already have.” I sighed, so relieved to feel him close to me, to smell his scent, to have his fingers caressing me. I had missed him so much. “But you do owe me a Christmas present.”

He laughed, leading me over to the car, holding my hand firmly in his. “Good point. I’ll work on that. How about a matching necklace?”

“That’s kind of a cop-out, but effective,” I told him, because frankly he needed to work a little harder than that.

“Rory Macintosh, what am I going to do with you?”

“I can think of a thing or two.”

“So can I.”