What You Leave Behind (16 page)

“You’re not ready. It’s fine.” The words are level and the sound of them is cold, and they hit Harper like a fist to the throat. She begins to sob heavier then, and she reaches for him, needs him, but he can’t be that for her—the brace that holds her together when he makes her fall apart. He can’t take her pain and give himself so much more. He thought he could, that he was strong enough, but he’s breaking. He stands and bows his head in the darkness. “I’ll sleep on the couch, tonight. We can talk about this later.” Harper tries to reply, but it comes out as a strangled cry. He nods again, and says, “Goodnight.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

It’s a special kind of loneliness to know you’re not the only one physically occupying a space, but to feel like you are. Harper struggles against that feeling, sensing Austin’s aura still within the walls of his home, but the space beside her in his bed remains vacant and cold. She pulls his sheets—the ones that smell like cigarette smoke and fresh wood and him—tightly around her body, trying to call forth some semblance of him, but there’s no conjuring him. She doesn’t cry for Liam or even for herself. She cries for Austin. She cries for how much she feels for him and how it may not be enough, and how she’s breaking his heart and how she can’t seem to stop. When it’s over, when her tears dry and hours have passed, she knots the thin sheets around her body and stands, collects herself, and goes in search of him.

The night is heavy, breaking from midnight blue to pure black, and the hour is late, but Harper knows he’s awake—she can hear the sad, simple strum of his guitar. Still, she tiptoes down the staircase and around the bend into the living room. His back is to her, eyes cast toward the patio window as his hand falls lazily over the steel strings. She distantly observes his reflection, the shadow play of the muscles that traverse his shoulders as his hands move along the frets, the strings, and the dip of his head as he eyes his finger work. Her hands ache to fit to his shoulders and pull him back against her as she sits behind him on the sofa. Instead, she chews her lower lip, leans against the wall, and listens to his breathy, aching croon—the only good the cigarettes ever did him. The words don’t tie together and there are moments of complete silence, but she knows from the crying of his guitar that it’s the same song he played months prior on the pub jukebox. He is so lonesome, so very lonesome.

“I can hear you breathing,” Austin notes in a whisper at the tail-end of the song. His hands still roam slowly over the guitar, eyes trained on the window. “Can’t sleep?”

“I can’t.” Harper doubts she’s welcome, but she moves to him then and fits herself behind him on the sofa. Hesitantly, she draws her head down and leans it softly against his bare back. When he doesn’t stop her, she breathes a sigh of relief that makes the soft hairs that dot his skin stand on end. Her mouth opens and closes a few times, the edge her lips gliding against his spine with the motion, and when the words don’t come, she presses them to his back, right over his longest scar, and lets them linger against his hot skin. His hands still at the feel of it, and she quietly tells him, “But, I want to.”

“You’re not talking about sleeping.”

“I’m sorry, Austin,” she murmurs against his spine. “I’m truly so sorry.”

The words coat the air, heavy and thick with their echo, and his hands begin to move again to drown them out. It’s a simple arpeggio, the same mesmeric notes, and Harper cannot stop her eyes from closing as she wraps her hands around his middle. The guitar rests lightly over her bony, bent wrists, and pushes her hands just a bit harder against his abdomen. He shifts it out of the way so he can see her palms resting upon him, and continues to play, watching her hands all the while. Soon, Austin discard the guitar and carries her to the bedroom so they can sleep wrapped in the warmth and comfort of one another, if only for one last night.

The sun has risen and climbed nearly halfway across the sky when Harper awakens to find herself with only his sheets once more. She knows Austin was there beside her, holding her, even if there’s no longer a body of evidence to confirm it. Slowly, she rises and finds her clothes neatly folded and stacked on the dresser by the bedroom door, sign of his presence, and a note written in his jagged, messy writing. 
Stay as long as you’d like. Or go. If you stay, we need to talk,
 it reads, and she slides it into the back pocket of her jeans before she pulls them up to her hips.

Washed in the yellow-white light of day, the kitchen doesn’t look like it did the last time she was in it. Or maybe she didn’t notice the flecks of gold in the granite countertops or the photo of Austin’s mother taped to the side of the refrigerator, because she was too busy looking for answers in green eyes filled with longing. She sighs as her hands brush across the stove, the place where she’d asked him if he wanted her, the place where she welcomed all of this to begin. She can almost feel his presence behind her as she lingers at the stove, remembering that night in the purest of detail, and she leans back, only to find he isn’t there.

Sighing, Harper trawls through Austin’s refrigerator and cabinets, looking for something to make for breakfast. She settles on eggs and toast, and pulls a pan from the cabinet she now knows they’re kept in. She eats alone at the island, in the same seat she sat upon last time, as if it’s her side of the countertop, her place, and loses herself in thoughts of it becoming that way. It’s easy for her to picture her cookie dough beside his Tecate on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, her tea kettle situated on the otherwise barren stovetop, the handmade Damascus steel knives she inherited from her grandfather displayed on their ladder-like stand in the corner. The thought trails with her throughout the day as she showers in his bathroom, uses his shampoo and imagines her toothbrush beside his in the cup on the bathroom counter, and dresses in his clothes, pilfered from the dresser she could share with him. She sees it in the books that line the shelves that hang on the wall opposite the kitchen, the way her copy of
Franny and Zooey
would fit perfectly beside his copy of
The
Catcher in the Rye
.

As she waits for him to return home, she pulls his Salinger from the shelf and settles onto his sofa, turns the worn pages of it with one hand and with the other, lazily toys with the guitar he left there last night—a custom Martin D-18 bought by Dan and Sly for his twenty-first birthday. Throughout the day, she soaks it all in, and something about being in his clothes, touching his things, walking across his floors and looking out his windows, it feels completely like home.

Liam lived, and still does, despite his absence, in his childhood bedroom for the whole of the time they were together, and it never felt quite as welcoming to Harper. Though they were never an imposition, nor was she treated as one, his parents were always there, which meant treading lightly and staying on guard. When she slept there on weekends, they slept fully clothed and wrapped innocently in each other’s arms, never knowing if Dan would wake Liam for an impromptu rafting trip or if Sly would come in and ask him to take out the garbage. There was always someone milling about, or the threat of someone who could be, and none of the house, save for his room, was Liam’s. Not that Harper needed or wanted a lot of space, but the towels weren’t his, he didn’t buy the groceries, there weren’t touches of him in every inch of the house, and while it was a house, it just wasn’t the same as this.

When Austin’s key turns in the lock hours later, after she’s finished nearly the whole book, she’s reminded of the spare key in the bottom of her purse and she knows she’s not ready to surrender it—to give him up. She gets to her feet, smoothes his t-shirt over her ribs, rakes a hand through her bedhead, and waits to greet him.

“You stayed,” he says when he sees her. The sight of her makes him ache. She stands in the space where the living room becomes the kitchen, his well-worn Calexico shirt, which he knows she can’t possibly know is his favorite, drapes over her and falls to her thighs like a dress. Her hair is in disarray, washed but unstyled, and she wears no makeup, not even the mascara she hardly ever goes without. He wants to tell her she’s beautiful and pull her to him, but he only pockets his keys, then his hands, and walks slowly across the foyer. “I didn’t think you would.”

She crosses fully to him and slips her arms through the space between his sides and bent elbows, wraps them around him, but he is stone. His hands don’t leave his pockets and his back stiffens beneath her touch. She pulls away as she feels it, hangs her head.

“You can’t just do that. I can’t be that for you.”

“I know,” Harper whispers, backs away from him and moves to sink back down on the sofa. He follows her, but stands before her, unwavering, and she can’t bring herself to look at anything but his boots as she starts to cry. “You deserve better,” she admits.

“I may deserve better or worse—I don’t know—but I know I want you. I’ve always wanted you. You, however, can’t say the same.” The words come after a while, quiet and calm, after the tears that slip from her eyes manage to soak directly into his heart. He falls to his knees with a sigh and pulls his fingers through his hair, because he wants so badly to cover Harper’s body with them instead, but he just can’t. She reaches for him, and they’re back to that place from weeks prior where she moved her fingers through his blonde curls and found out what it was like to touch him. He moves against her touch, into it, and then lets himself be hauled up by her arms, lets himself feel her lips against his neck. It’s only momentary, a brief slip in resolve. “You can’t—Harper, stop.”

“Right,” Harper says with a nod, lets her chastened hands fall to her lap. “I should go.”

“Why did you even bother to stay?” The words crash hard against her as she stands and staggers against them, grabs the arm of the sofa as she hinges at the waist beneath their weight. The book falls to the floor, her place lost as it hits the tile, and she can’t look away from where it rests. She stares at it hard as Austin comes up behind her. The sight of it blurs with her tears as he asks, “Why? For one last—one last way to break my heart? Do you have any idea how cruel that is? Do you?”

“That’s not—I sat here, Austin, I sat here all day—I sat here and thought about how we—how this—” She motions to the couch, to the book on the floor, to the kitchen countertops and bookshelves, and she spills the words as she spills her tears, messy and in ruins. “We could—I want to—”

“No.” The word stops her, so firm and heavy in her ears, and she shakes her head at it disbelievingly as her bottom lip trembles. She fists her hands in his shirt and pulls him so near to her that it’s almost torture. He can feel her heartbeat through his chest. When she looks up at him, it’s with pleading, tear-filled eyes and the only reply he can give to what she’s begging for is, “We can’t, because you can’t—you can’t even get out the words, Harp. And I won’t. I never should have.”

“I can, Aussie. I can.” Harper’s tears fall down her cheeks, drip from her chin, and land where Austin’s chest meets hers. She looks down at the spot where they fall, then up at him once more, and fights to get out a steady, “I can do this.”

“I wish I could believe you. I wish I could let you destroy yourself and me, and not care about the consequences. But look at us, Harp.” He shakes his head solemnly, eyes closed as if he would rather do anything but look at them, at what they’ve done to each other. “This isn’t—it’s been, what, two weeks? And in those two weeks, how much have we hurt each other? How many times has he come between us without even being here? How many times have I made you cry?” She whimpers, but doesn’t offer an answer to any of his questions. “I wish I could touch you, kiss you without wondering whether or not you’re thinking of him, whether or not you’ll push me away or if you’ll cry and why, but I can’t. Because you’re not ready. You’re not ready and I was selfish to think you were, to hope you were. I don’t blame you, though. Please know that. I set myself up for this.”

“That isn’t—”

“Oh, come on. Why else would you have stopped me last night, Harper?”

“It’s just so soon, so fast, and I think that—”

“Is that it, really?” He can feel her shallow breaths against his shirt as he speaks, can feel the vibration of her body against his as she cries, and it’s so hard for him to not lean in and press his mouth to hers, to be everything he wants and she needs. He takes a deep, steadying breath, then levels his stare on hers, and slowly asks, “Can you honestly stand here, look me in the eye, and tell me that’s the only reason? That it has nothing to do with Liam? I don’t think you can. And I know I’m an asshole for saying this, but it’s—it’s got to be me or him, Harp.”

“That isn't fair.”

“It isn't. I know it isn’t,” he agrees, backing away, feeling the end of the conversation drawing near, the end of them, this. With the distance put between their bodies, there’s more of her to look at and it’s too much, so much that he has to look away. With his eyes trained on the door, he admits, “But it also isn't fair for me to love someone who loves someone else. I've done it for years and I'm still doing it now, and I—I just can’t anymore. I can’t—not like this.”

“I was honest with you when I told you I wasn’t over him, but I don’t love him, Austin.”

“Maybe that’s true,” he concedes, his voice thick with emotion, and Harper’s eyes fill with a blaze of hope. It flickers out when he says, “But you also don't love me.”

She doesn’t reply and he can only wait so long for her to tell him he’s right, so with one final glance at the beautifully broken woman before him, he turns and walks up the stairs, down the hall, and bangs his bedroom door closed with an air of finality. He has to go before he gives in, gives up—his resolve slips with each second he looks into her eyes. She will either come after him or she won’t, and as he folds himself onto his bed, he waits to see which it will be. He’s nearly certain he knows the only door that will open will be the one that leaves him behind.