Smile and Mean It
Summer
I’ve dealt with enough men inside their head so get the fuck out of it.
That’s what my rage has wanted to say.
That’s what my understanding has kept me from saying.
So it’s the squash that gets the brunt of my warring emotions. The people who live below us, even the people across the hall, can probably hear my chopping. It’s loud, but not careless. I am meticulous with my squash, like my mom would want me to be, and each one is shaped to exact thickness.
I thought about getting myself a bottle of beer. Which was hard to turn down, another thing I don’t want to get , this way to tolerate your life more, but I still don’t like who I am when I drink. I don’t think I like who anybody is when they drink. I got drinking out of my system during my college years.
The squash is sauteing on the skillet when I finally have my phone in my hand, scrolling through my messages.
Wall up, tap in, type out, Adam talked about the end again.
Code for, talk to him . He seems to listen to Levi more than he does me.
Last time, it was him saying he should’ve just died in the crash, all might as well .
Sometimes, I wish something would kill me too.
But it’s not this world we want to leave. Just this life.
Do you need to talk?
My eyes blur Levi’s response and I blink them clear. I know I can talk to him. He’s told me before to talk to him when I can’t talk to Adam. Now he just asks, waiting for me to turn him down. He still tries to take things deep, and I still can’t let him. Not when I can’t see him. I want his eyes with his words, the face to face that shows me it doesn’t just come from the safety of a screen, of the miles between us. I have to see the spark, with a hint of anguish, that never died when he looked at me, even after he broke my heart.
And his last deep words were deep enough to settle into my core.
He didn’t want to be with me.
Right.
His gaze on mine said I was all he could see and he let me be with his best friend.
Until we finish our unfinished business, every conversation feels like a hem and haw, parrying our elephant, or tag teaming with Adam.
No. Thanks , I send back, then put my phone face down on the marble.
I stir the squash with a squeeze in my chest I’m sick of feeling, an accompanying guilt I’m sick of carrying, sucking it all up again because I still don’t have a choice, and this food needs to be soft but not squishy. The squash needs me.
And my best friend, who’s now inviting herself in, needs the squash.
“Hey oh!” she hollers out, bringing in the cheer, hauling in her bag purse that houses her entire existence when she’s away from her own house. Need something from a First Aid kit? Look inside the purse, she’s got it.
I glance toward the closed bedroom door, hoping her voice will make Adam come out—they really liked each other before the accident changed everything—but there’s still not a peep.
I throw Clarissa a flat grin as I toss the squash with the oil, circles flying a bit higher than usual.
“Hey, be careful,” she lightly scolds. “I’m not eating any pieces that fall on the floor.” She drops her bag at the island as I try to be careful, while finding a comfort in the constant motion and the satisfaction of the pieces landing perfectly.
“I believe in the five second rule,” I say back as a tease and she makes a playful pouting noise as she fixes her wind blown hair, tucking the blonde strands behind her ears. She’s the one who introduced me to a straightener our freshman year of college. Her’s is naturally straight, but she can never have it straight enough.
She waits until I’ve topped the squash with seasonings and herbs and have our filled plates in front of us before she sighs, pointing out and asking, after a glance toward the closed door, “You’re taking care of him, again, today, who’s taking care of you?”
“Besides me, you are.”
She drops her elbows onto the marble with a nod, going in with the question I don’t let her ask often or usually give a real answer to.
But today feels the heaviest, at the edge of something.
“When are you getting out of here?” She whispers it close like we’re making plans to sneak me out of the country without anyone knowing. Some of her hair grazes her plate and she checks her food for shedding before looking back up at me in waiting.
One more time.
“I love him, okay?” I say back, low. “I’m committed to him.” I chew a bite of my squash, closing my eyes with the burst of flavors, a palate cleanser.
“You’re gonna love him to your grave,” she says around a bite of food, with a groan of approval as she fingers in an herb that tries to escape. “You almost did that with your dad.”
“I didn’t ask,” I warn her around another bite of my own.
Clarissa is actually nicer than me. I tend to be the one giving the tough love, so when it’s me in the hot seat, she tries to be that person for me.
I didn’t ask, but her look says she knows. Says I don’t have to. She feels the extra weight of the day and how everything on my heart is beating too hard, too much.
She makes a sudden noise like she’s rewinding her words, and takes another quick bite of squash as if her first went away too. “So I have vacation time coming up and could use a girls’ trip. What do you say? We go driving, and if we happen to end up in North Carolina…” She shrugs with her filled fork, then shoves the bite into her mouth. “It’s just seven hours from here, it could happen.”
I do miss Rosalee Bay. I almost ordered a water bed once to simulate being at sea.
That town was where I learned to breathe. It was where I learned what breathing is .
And for too long, longer than just this past year, if I’m honest, I’ve just been holding my breath.
My face softens as I watch Clarissa chow down. I love her, too, and I appreciate her effort. The flaw? Leaving means leaving Adam…alone.
Adam’s already abandoned his own philosophies—himself. I can’t let him think I don’t care about him or us.
One more time.
“I can’t abandon him when he needs me,” I say from the thought before adding an inarguable fact. “He was there for me when I needed him.”
“And he’s not anymore,” she supplies nonetheless, reminding me what basically everyone in my life has done. “He’s abandoned you and your feelings, just like your dad, just like…” She uses her fork to write an L in the air over her plate, and it takes her a couple strokes before it registers.
I sigh around a big bite. “He got handed a life sentence he never wanted.”
“We could still be talking about you too.”
“This won’t be forever.” I push the assurance, mostly to myself, one I’ve chanted so many times.
Then I drop my fork and grip both hands around the edge of the island, saying as an almost helpless seeking hiss, “What kind of person would I be if I left him when he’s like this?”
Clarissa scrunches a corner of her mouth before she says, “The same person who didn’t go see your dad when he had a heart attack. Because he doesn’t deserve you,” she adds quickly, with a wide stare and pointedly raised brows that give my insides a squeeze, another silent laugh. “But so, even if it’s not forever,” she continues when that’s the only response she gets, “what about the other half of your heart?” She strokes her fork over her food again and I snatch it, holding it up until she gives me her okay, I’ll stop face, with her hand held out, smiling.
At least one of us can still smile and mean it.
I chew, glancing at the closed bedroom door, my swallow hard and bland. The squash is losing its flavor. “He’s a choice I made.”
“You didn’t have another one,” Clarissa says at the tail as she stacks her fork and stretches her mouth to fit it all in.
Adam was the one I started to have feelings for after Levi turned mine for him away. After he lied to me.
“Reexamine that,” she adds with a nod, like we’re back in biology, leaning over a microscope.
I have. I’ve examined everything from every angle. And yes, I’m always brought right back to what could have been . The impossible notion to move on from completely. The one that got away crap. Some advice? Don’t ever have a one who got away.
In my case, it’s what should have been. Double dose of impossible.
“So you made a choice, but this isn’t what you signed up for,” Clarissa continues, meshed through her chewing, reminding me I need to start responding, because when I don’t, it just keeps her going.
“He didn’t sign up for this, either.” The sound of my voice is stating, not defending.
“True, but you’re still choosing to let his grief and misery become yours.”
I focus in on a circle of squash and fork around seasoning chunks. Grief seems to follow me no matter what I do or where I am. Trained.
“It could be worse,” I whisper.
“It could be better,” she counters, the tongs of her fork dangerously close to my face. “You’re really letting your old self down.”
I wince at her throwing that punch.
“Something’s gotta give. Right? You both can’t trudge through your lives forever .”
I give her a pointed glare I only half feel. We won’t be.
“Is this gonna be our first conversation of every day now?” I ask as a tease, bending to the possibility with an undercurrent of dread.
Her chewing pauses as she thinks. Then she decides, “Yes,” her smile as conflicted as I feel.
Clarissa has been the biggest help in keeping me going as I’ve tried to keep Adam going. On the days and moments I’m feeling like I’m back to having nothing to count on, she’s here. I know some of what would’ve happened if I didn’t have her, especially this past year.
My eyes fill as my heart tries to, or does, the feeling there a twinge as I round the island, her arms already open for me. I’m a big hugger, and she’s the one I love to receive them from and give them to the most.
“Thank you,” I tell her through the tears that still stay at my lids.
“You always have me. For life,” she promises, ours.
“For life,” I repeat.
“All the same, I’m proud of you,” she tells me once we’ve released our hold to each other—my hold to her.
“I’m not,” I say after a hard swallow.
“Hey, you’re working with the tools you have. Like you were then.”
I have more now and I’m not using them.
She gives my loose tank top, tucked into my shorts, a tug, loosening more of the tuck. “Be the dragon,” she urges me, a soft reference to the dragon design. “Spit your fire.”
The bedroom door opens behind me and I watch Clarissa’s eyes shift over my shoulder before I turn to find Adam standing in the doorway. His chest is bare as his face bears ache and vulnerability, that he shields some in the presence of Clarissa, his clothes balled and shifting slowly between his hands.
I sigh at the sight of him, a grip loosening in my chest, but the threatening touch still there.
He holds my stare a moment longer, then walks to the bathroom, closing himself inside.
Clarissa gives me a folded smile with a lift of her brows before she retrieves her purse near our feet, knowing the deal. She eyes the bites still left on her plate, takes one second to think, then swipes it up. “I’ll bring this back later,” she says with a raise of the plate.
My smile is a copy of hers but smaller as she shoves in another forkful on her rush to leave like she’s stealing thousands worth of jewels.
At the click of the apartment door, I glance toward the bathroom door, listening for the spray of sink water, then the buzz of the razor.
After those come and go, I listen for the spray of shower water.
When that comes, I let it pull me to him, to let us disappear into each other instead of into ourselves.
Our eyes connect through the glass as I strip, that warmed flare flashing through his ache and vulnerability, and remain connected as he slides open the shower door. His arms encircle my waist as I shut us in, a haze of hopelessness back in his eyes as he releases the words running through his head before I joined him.
“All I could do and be happy doing is gone. It’s never coming back, so I just think, why should I?”
I clasp the nape of his neck and squeeze as I pull him in, his forehead resting to mine, his eyes closing. Then I lean back, tracing my thumb along his brow, wishing they’d waggle again.
His smile lines are subtler.
My face hasn’t moved in the same ways, either.
Because I’d like to come back stays clenched behind my teeth, and I tell him, “Because you can do a lot and you can be happy with me.”
I can be happy with him too.
His eyes open, another flashing flare before his mouth finds mine in a kiss that’s probing, thirsting, chasing the past, tasting the sadness and the anger and the little hope we can still have in these moments.
He lifts me with a flash of pain on his face as I latch onto him. My back presses against the wall and his hand moves to my hip as he pushes inside me. And we feel each other, try to get back to each other, until the steam dissipates and we have to wash off in the cold.
I’m fighting shivers as I towel myself dry.
Adam stays in a bit longer. He can handle cold water. I need hell fire.
When I’m back in my clothes with my wet hair piled on top of my head, I tap on the glass to get his attention and open the door. “Want some beef stew?” It’s a comfort meal and one of our favorites. It takes a couple hours to make so it’ll be ready by dinner time.
He stalls a moment, then dips his soapy head beneath the stream. “Sure.”
“I need you to be there,” I say, holding to the door. At the table. For me. For us.
“I will,” he promises, and I leave him to go cook, knowing there’s a fifty-fifty chance I’ll be eating alone.