What You Leave Behind (26 page)

“What? It’s not what I think? Is that what you’re going to say to me?” Austin’s tone is biting then, seething, and his stare is hard. She quivers beneath it, feels so low, even though she knows she’s done nothing wrong. It’s so accusatory though, so pained and pointed, that it makes her cry. “I came here to 
apologize
, because that’s what real men fucking do when they’re wrong, and you’re in a fucking towel and saying that motherfucker’s name and 
it’s not what I think
?”

“It isn’t.”

“Bullshit, Harper. I knew, and I tried so hard, and all I wanted was a chance, and I—how could you just—”

“You should listen to her, Austin,” Liam’s voice cuts in, and Harper turns at the sound of it, startled. She is between them, again—she is always between them, always has been. Liam nears and Austin does too, and Harper’s head and heart throb and throb, and she thinks she may black out. “Because things aren’t always as they seem, are they? Or did I not see what I thought I saw last night?”

“That wasn’t—”

“Wasn’t what I thought, right? That’s what you’re going to say?” Liam’s voice is so calm and Austin’s breathing is so hard, that Harper doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how it’s all come to this. Yesterday, she was kissing Austin’s mouth and Liam was a distant memory. “Well, neither is this.”

“Like I can believe 
you
?” Austin spits, his voice escalating.

“You can believe
her
.”

“What happened last night?” Harper asks weakly, cutting through their exchange. Her stare is trapped on the floor, on the shrinking space between Austin’s boots and Liam’s sneakers as their argument takes them nearer to each other, but at the sound of her voice, they still. Silence falls over the room. Liam won’t tell her because he knows he’s caused her enough pain, and this isn’t his pain to give. Austin can’t bring himself to tell her either, because of what he’s just accused her of. No one speaks and the silence grows around and through all of the misunderstandings and unspoken explanations. After a while, she whispers, “Get out,” because she doesn’t have anything left to say. “Both of you—just get out.”

Liam says nothing and turns to leave, places her keys on the table in the foyer as he goes.

Austin remains, his mouth and feet as still as the silence, and Harper can’t look at him. He can’t see her through his tears anyway. They both stand there, unmoving and crying, and they both know—they know that it’s over, and neither of them has to say it, neither of them can. They can feel it with an overwhelming finality. His feet break more glass as he moves away, as he leaves, and she looks at the shattered pieces as if they’re the kin of her broken heart.

He whispers, “I’m sorry,” but the creak of the door’s hinges covers his already wasted words.

Liam watches as his breath turns to smoke in the dim wash of moonlight and he waits. He doesn’t know why he feels compelled to, but he does. It’s there in his body, a slight shiver up his spine as he turns to leave, and he feels it, feels weighted and tied to the moment, this place and the people in it. He paces the length of the driveway, his legs full of frenetic energy, and his eyes disobey him every once in a while, drop their gaze to the oil stain as his feet pass it. He is torn in so many directions, but firm in where and who he has brought himself to be, and he waits. The front door opens and Austin is a mess—tears stain his cheeks in thick lines and his nose is red, nostrils flaring, his lower lip trembling.

Once, not too long ago, Austin was Liam’s best friend, and this is why he waits.

“Austin—”

“Oh, fuck you,” Austin spits and brusquely barrels his shoulder against Liam’s, hard enough for Liam to lose his footing. Austin keeps walking—waiting for no man, especially not Liam—and mutters, “Self-serving piece of shit.”

“You’re right,” Liam states, his words clear and thick, loud, as he gets to his feet. Austin keeps moving, still headed for his truck at the end of the drive, and Liam steps in double-time to catch him. He nearly has his door open once Liam reaches him. “Did you hear me?” he asks, grabbing Austin’s shoulder. “You’re right. You’re fucking right. I’m a gigantic self-serving piece of shit, and anything else you can think to call me. You’re right.”

“Not now. You don’t want to test me right now,” Austin seethes. He shakes his shoulder roughly, tries to pull away from his grasp, but Liam holds firm. “Fucking let go, Barnes.”

“No.” Austin rounds on him then, but Liam expects it and his hands grab Austin’s wrists and the side of the truck behind him almost acts as an accomplice, doing the rest of the work and holding Austin in place. He struggles a moment and almost bests Liam, but then submits—he’s too drained to fight. “You done?” Liam asks, his tone even—not mocking or hurtful, not with an ounce of flourish or grandstanding. Austin nods, his eyes closed and fists unfurled, and Liam releases him. “Come on. I’m buying you a beer.”

“You think it’s just going to go back to that? 
Really
?” He’s loud and his voice cracks and breaks. “You’re completely fucked in the head.”

“I am,” Liam replies, shame and degradation accented in the two small, quiet words. “I am everything you think I am, and nothing at all.”

“Save your fucking proverb-sounding bullshit, Barnes.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you—either of you,” Liam replies, and Austin looks away, hot, angry tears seeping back into his eyes. They fall too quickly, like they’ve been waiting on his lashes for too long. He brushes the tears away hastily, but Liam sees them before he does. It hurts to watch, but Liam takes the pain, because he’s caused it. “This has all just gone so far off the rails and—”

“You left. You fucking 
left
,” Austin cries and spits and his voice sounds nothing like his own. He gives Liam a shove, then one more, and Liam takes them, hands at his sides, no matter how many more follow with his words. “You left her and you left me and you lost us both, and no amount of bullshit you can spill out of your fucking mouth is going to change that.”

“I know,” Liam admits quietly. “I know.”

“Do you? Do you know? She was 
destroyed
. And me—it was always you and me, and then it was just me. We both had our fucking foundation knocked out from under us, and you just didn’t fucking care. Did you even think about what you were leaving behind?”

“I called—”

“You called too late.” Austin’s words are steadier, drawn out and laced with a touch of hate. He stares over Liam’s shoulder at the dim lights in the front windows, at the absence of motion portrayed within them, and he closes his eyes and says, “All of this is too late.”

“How long has it been?”

Austin scoffs, chokes on his words, then turns his gaze to Liam and slowly tells him, “Since, ‘
Her name’s Harper, she’s in my homeroom.’
”

“I had no—” Liam’s eyes are wide, his mouth gaping, and he feels as though Austin has just forcibly removed the air from his lungs, his words clawing deep to dig it out and set it free. He staggers, and it almost seems too dramatic, but it happens, and he palms the side of Austin’s truck to stay upright. His head hanging, he stammers, “Why didn’t you—why did you let me—”

“Right. Well, none of it matters now. Neither one of us wins here.” Austin’s words are solemn and they’re so full of finality, he thinks he can hear all of his burning bridges crashing down. His feet are on dry land though, and he’s walking away. He has to walk away. With a flick of his wrist, he opens the door of his truck and nods, “I’m done. And you, you fucking piece of shit, you’d better be, too. She deserves better than this.”

“I was—I left because I was going to propose and—” Liam blurts out the words, rambles them, and they half make sense, half sound themselves out to the world, and Austin half hopes he’s heard their pieces wrong. “I couldn’t—I had to know that I—I loved her so much and I—”

“Excuse me?” Austin’s hand, still on the handle of his truck, falls to his side and hangs there limply, much like his jaw. “What did you say?”

“I—I left because I—”

“You were going to propose?” Austin’s question sounds like an invitation to a fight and Liam nods his RSVP. “And that’s why you left?”

“I had some kind of meltdown and I—I knew she was the one, I just had to 
know
 she was and I—”

“You are the biggest asshole I have ever met, Barnes.” Liam nods, because he can’t disagree, and Austin shoves him again, his hands still at his sides, taking it. “You destroyed that girl, that fucking 
amazing
 girl, and—”

“I know.”

“—and 
that’s 
why you left her? Because you weren’t sure that years and years and decades with her were what you wanted? You had to
test yourself
?” Austin keeps pushing, taking Liam halfway up the yard with no intention to stop. He pushes and pushes and Liam falls onto his back, his shoulders digging into the deadened grass below him. It doesn’t take much from there for a fist to fly, to connect with Liam’s face, then his ribs, and Austin is livid and Liam just takes it, doesn’t block his punches or throw any of his own. He stops after a while, after there’s enough blood and his knuckles are raw. As he stands upright, Austin cradles his hand to his chest and watches as Liam writhes in pain below him. He feels no remorse at the sight, or when he says, “That doesn’t even hurt half as bad as what you put her through, and it would do you good to remember that.”

Liam doesn’t feel much of anything then. He awakens some time later and gingerly carries himself to his car, where he bleeds on the seats and tries to catalog every ounce of the pain. If the pain he feels, the blood he’s lost, is not even half of her broken heart, he knows that he has quite a long way to go to set things right. He doesn’t know where to start, but she wanted him to go, so he does.

He leaves, and this time, it’s not because he wants to, but because it’s what she needs.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The weekend passes and Monday, too. Then, Tuesday and Wednesday go, and Thursday arrives and leaves. Harper holds it together until then, until Friday evening when it's been exactly one week since she’s seen them. She’s on the floor of Clare’s bedroom, sobbing and babbling nonsense into her plush white carpeting. As her face presses into it, Clare rubs her back and wonders if she’ll have rug burns from the way that her body is wracking with sobs, how her forehead moves against the carpet with each one. She’s seated close enough that Harper could crawl into her lap, if she wanted to or if it hurt that badly, and she strokes her hands through her hair, lets her get it all out. When she’s done, when the tears stem and she sits up and looks at her, at Clare’s visage of empathy, the tears almost come again.

Almost.

She tries to cry—a sincere effort—but nothing comes out, just a broken imitation of a sob, and she laughs at the sound, her blotchy cheeks stretching to accommodate her wide smile.

“Okay,” Clare says with a nervous chuckle, dragging out the
a
.

Harper laughs harder and Clare considers calling Hilary—or the psychiatric unit at Rogue Valley in Medford, fearing she’s having some kind of mental schism. She does neither, but sits and watches in quiet disbelief as Harper laughs until she hiccups and then laughs some more. When she’s winded and the muscles of her stomach burn from laughing, she takes gulping breaths to allay her hiccups as she lies back on the floor, her hair fanned out around her like a copper halo.

Clare just sits there, astounded.

“You can only get knocked so far down, you know?” Harper says, unprompted.

Her eyes are closed and her cheeks have almost returned to their normal milky color and she says the words with such an air of normalcy, Clare almost nods and moves right along with the night, as if nothing ever happened. But something has happened, something bizarre, and there’s no glossing over it.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks. As the words escape her mouth, she notices how
mental health professional
they sound, so she throws in a, “Because that was immensely fucking weird,” to level things out.

“Which—the uncontrollable crying or the raucous laughter?”

“The laughing,” Clare answers with a finger tapping her chin and her eyes narrowed, as if deep in thought. “Yeah, definitely the laughing.”

“I just couldn’t—can’t cry anymore,” Harper replies with a shrug. “It just wouldn’t come out. That’s what did.”

“I don’t—”

“I think I’m just done.” Harper rolls onto her side and reaches for the bottle of wine beside Clare’s knee and downs a swallow. It’s a red blend and she likes that Clare drinks red wine on a white carpet without glasses and thinks nothing of it. She wants to be that carefree, so she resolves to be. “I’m deciding to be done.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“Well, then I’m deciding that’s a fucking splendid idea,” Clare replies and clinks an imaginary bottle to the one in Harper’s grasp and waits for her to finish her sip and pass her the real thing. When she does, she toasts Harper’s own imaginary bottle and repeats, “Fucking splendid,” before tossing her head back and gulping down some red.

***

Harper enacts a moratorium on all things Austin and Liam during the transitional phase of her doneness—speak no, see no, hear no. She gets into a routine—goes from home to work before the sun rises, from work to home when it seeps down beneath the horizon and paints the sky a creamy black. Her days off are spent stocking the pantry and baking all kinds of pastries, which she eventually begins to sell at Meat and Eat when Clare, Dylan, and Hilary have put on more than their fair share of sympathy weight. Her nights are filled with books she’s always meant to read, jogging roads she knows are safe routes, and stargazing on the roof in the black of night, a glass of wine in her hand.

She starts to enjoy how solitary she’s become, how independent, and part of her begins to empathize with Liam—part of her even forgives him. And another piece of her, the one that recognizes just how lost she really was, begins to see Austin in a new light, too. He’s been lost for so long and his still not found. She wonders if that was a part of it for him—finding himself in someone else, in her. Slowly, she comes to terms with them, with herself without them—she begins to heal.