The False Flat

CHAPTER 16

LIFE REALIZATION #8: TALKING TO A MUSTACHE IS STRANGELY THERAPEUTIC

For five solid seconds, I thought the whole scene was a mirage: the man, the couch, the elaborate house of cards on the floor. I needed distance from Grant because now he was in my mirages. Was this a normal side effect of a concussion, seeing people and couches that weren’t there?

“I didn’t know if you’d be coming back down or not. I told myself I’d leave by ten p.m. if you didn’t.”

Okay, this was a full-on audio-visual hallucination.

I threw my phone at my mind’s projection, hoping to watch the figment fade away, but Grant caught it midair.

“Umm. Did I do something wrong?”

Why couldn’t he have been a random intruder holding me at gunpoint?

I patted my hair. “Grant! It’s you.” Thank God I’d had that keratin treatment; otherwise the relaxed curls would’ve been unruly spirals, rendering me ridiculous.

“Did you expect someone else? I told you I was staying.”

Had he?

Damn, I didn’t have on makeup or a bra. I turned around and went back upstairs, hoping he was far enough away not to realize what a mess I was. Likely too late for that. “I’ll be right back,” I called over my shoulder. “Forgot something.”

“No problem. I’ll be here.”

I needed to think, and I couldn’t think with my hair wild, my face naked, and my nipples poking against my shirt like a porn star’s. I conditioned my curls, not great, but it would have to do, and fastened my bra much too tight. Then I did my “natural” look with a small handful of products instead of my usual pile.

I came back downstairs after a record-breaking remake of myself, with a concussion, I might add, and instantly asked, “Where did you get that couch?”

“A couple guys delivered it right after you went upstairs. Did I accept delivery of the wrong couch?” He rubbed his facial hair in concern. “They said it was for Chad Gwinn.” He added, “You look angry. I probably should’ve—”

I shook my head, regretted the movement, then took the phone he was extending and tried to sound pleasant. “Must be the gift he was talking about. I think he’s sick of sitting on the floor.”

“That’s nice.”

Was it? I found it irritating. He’d picked the piece without consulting me.

I moved to Chad’s couch because my muscles were threatening to throw their collective hands up and leave me to flop on the floor. The cushion gave only slightly, which fit. It was like Chad, the perfect mix of good looking yet stiff and professional. I slid to the floor in front of the Chad-couch. Chadouch. Chaouch.

Grant leaped over as if to catch me.

“I’m okay. I want to be on the floor.”

He nodded as if my preference for the hard walking surface seemed reasonable.

I stared at his unbelievable house of cards. Had he glued them together? No way they were standing on their own.

He retrieved a blanket and sat on the floor beside me, propping his arm up on the chaouch cushions as he faced me.

“I didn’t know your hair was curly. It’s nice.”

“Yeah. Thanks. I hate it.”

He chuckled. “We all want the opposite of what we have.”

I hated when people said this, that straight-haired people wanted curly hair and vice versa. I didn’t want straight hair. I wanted manageable curls. I did not have manageable curls. I had some sort of defiant nest, where each hair had its own agenda and was hell bent on executing its unique, original style. People were naive when they said they “would give anything for my natural hair.” It had been a source of grief my entire life. One time, when my hair had been particularly knotted, my mom gave up and handed the comb to my dad, relenting to his authority because I had “Black people hair” and he was Black. But his solution had included scissors, the wrong choice. The hacked hair had been too short to put in a bun or contain in any way, which had resulted in threats from the Black girls in fifth grade and then being detained after class by a Black male substitute teacher who thought it was appropriate to touch my hair and give me pomade advice while the two of us were alone in the classroom.

Brandon, my equally mixed older brother and best friend, had come to my rescue. He didn’t have the hair problems I had or quite the same social issues, but he understood. We were a matching set.

I wanted to cry again, but I couldn’t. Grant was right here, and my mother’s words, “Hurt in private, heal in silence,” bounced inside my damaged head.

He shifted beside me, his hand gently patting my arm.

I inhaled and kept the air in my lungs for as long as I could stand it, then let it all out in one big puff. I didn’t think I’d breathed that hard, but the entire house of cards came tumbling down in a flurry of queens, kings, and spades. An actual house of cards.

“I’m sorry I just blew your amazing architectural masterpiece down,” I said. “I bet it was the best house of cards in the history of card houses. I bet if you’d applied for the Guinness—”

“It wasn’t that great, and you didn’t blow it down. I accidentally kicked it with my foot when I—”

“When I was twelve, my brother died from leukemia.” My head whipped toward Grant as my hand slowly covered my mouth. Had I said those words out loud? But he pulled my hand away from my face and held it in his own.

“I’m here. You can tell me,” he invited.

Six words.

My whole life had been packed away for over twenty years, and with six words, he was asking me to unpack it. I hadn’t put the memories in neat stacks or organized them in any fashion. I had crumpled them up and thrown them in, stuffed the mental suitcase so full that I had to jump on it to get the lock to fasten.

You can tell me.An open invitation.

I couldn’t meet his eyes. I glanced over at the storage closet, the coffin for the box of my brother’s things.

When I attempted eye contact with Grant, I shut down again. But some part of me wanted to tell him. Earlier, I hadn’t used my usual coping mechanisms because I’d been past consolation. Now, I didn’t want him to be a four or a ten. I wanted him to be Grant. He made me comfortable in a way I couldn’t explain. It didn’t make sense. This man didn’t make sense. I’d never wanted to talk about this with anyone, hadn’t.

I looked down at his mustache, and despite everything I’d said about it, despite how much I’d despised it, I could talk to that damned mustache.

“Brandon, my brother ... he was everything to me, like you and Deanna.” The words fell out of my mouth, simultaneously raw and dust covered. “We didn’t have much extended family. It was mainly the four of us. My parents worked a lot. My mom was a corporate boss. My dad was a doctor. Brandon and I ...” It was coming back, that feeling I’d had, someone being there for me. Someone I cared about so much. That someone being ripped away. I stopped, swallowed. “Brandon was my best friend. Our lives were happy. Our parents weren’t always there, but we knew they loved us, and we had each other.” I stopped. The mustache wiggled a little, encouragement to keep going. “And then ...” I swallowed. Even a sideways glance at the memory was proving to be hard. Tears pulsed behind the dam I’d built. My voice thickened, weighed down with the grief that had torn me open. Grant massaged my palm. He didn’t ask me to go on. He didn’t say anything, but his touch, the contact, the increasing pressure, told me he was there. And he was safe.

Iwas safe.

I found my voice: “Then he started feeling bad—little things at first. I don’t remember the details, but my dad consulted one of his colleagues. From there, life completely changed. As soon as Brandon started going to the doctor, it wasn’t long before he was hospitalized.”

My breath changed. I saw Brandon in that bed—wires, cords, pale skin, and sunken eyes—and all the little passageways allowing air into my lungs seized, like they disliked the memory as much as I did.

He must’ve noticed the change, too, because he squeezed my hand again, hard, and then when that wasn’t enough, he pulled me to his chest. I hesitated but didn’t draw back.

Had I fallen into my mother’s arms, she would’ve stiffened, transformed into the statue she’d become. She would’ve told me to think of something else. She would’ve told me to stop being weak. Be strong ... for Brandon.

His grip loosened when I tried to pull away. But when the pressure of his arms was gone, I crumpled. He folded me back into his embrace, and for the first time, I let the arms of another person hold me together, the real me, the one with the problems. My mother’s voice told me to support myself, to will my muscles erect. But right then, I needed arms around me. And until they were there, until I no longer felt like I was shouldering the burden alone, I didn’t know how much I needed another human being to ... be there.

I wasn’t sure if he heard any of my babbling through my tears, but I kept talking into his shoulder as he held me. “I had to watch him die, Grant. I was the only one in the room. He was talking one second, and the next, he was gone.” Gone. Final. Permanent.

His hand ran down my back, slowly, and I closed my eyes, pushing away the feeling that this was wrong somehow.

With one final breath, I’d lost my best friend. I’d lost the one who’d always told me it was going to be okay. I’d lost my mom and dad too. They left with Brandon, both of them fragmenting and rebuilding themselves into people I didn’t know.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

I’m not sure how long we would’ve stayed there like that, me curled in his arms, him rubbing my back, if we hadn’t been interrupted, but the jangle of keys had me pushing away, looking startled at the door.

Chad.

I tried to leap up, but my body, spent from the accident, from the tearing open of my soul, took too long, and he was already inside the door, staring down at me halfway up and Grant still on the floor by the couch.

Time slowed.

Chad stood, anger unfolding on his face. “What the hell?” His overnight bag hit the floor.

“She had an accident. I brought her home from the hospital,” Grant explained.

“You two look like you were pretty cozy next to my couch.”

Grant stood, his jaw clenched as he faced Chad. “Didn’t you hear me say she’d had an accident?”

Chad’s gaze flicked to me. The features of his face seemed unsure what to do, where to settle, concern or anger. They landed somewhere in between. He blinked, moved past Grant, and came to stand in front of me.

“You’re hurt?” His tone was brusque, but the look in his eyes had softened.

His eyes remained on mine as Grant explained. “She fell off her bike during a ride today. An ambulance took her to the ER. I stayed with her to make sure she was okay. She has a concussion.”

“I appreciate you taking care of her.” The appreciation didn’t sound like appreciation. “But I’ll take it from here. You can go.”

Grant moved to where I could see him, where Chad wasn’t completely between us, and looked at me with the concern of a friend. “Is that what you want, Penelope?”

My eyes, no longer focused on his mustache, looked into his. There was so much more to tell, but I’d never told anyone what I’d told him. I’d never let myself trust anyone enough. And I’d known him for what? Six weeks? I didn’t know what that meant. Were we friends now? Or was it the concussion talking?

When I didn’t answer, Chad answered for me: “Of course that’s what she wants. Like I said, we appreciate what you’ve done.”

Chad had no idea what Grant had done, but I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t tell him how much this meant to me. All my life I’d been told I was fine when I wasn’t, by my family, by myself. Tonight, I’d told someone else I wasn’t, and Grant hadn’t told me to be strong. He’d let me be weak.

“Thank you. Chad’s right. You should go. I’ve taken up too much of your time.”

I hated the smugness on Chad’s face, the possessiveness, like Grant was ruining a moment between the two of us, when it was really the other way around.

“You’ll call if you need anything,” Grant confirmed.

I nodded.

“I’ll go then.”

Chad’s arm came around me, but Grant stepped up to my open side. Without a word, he touched my shoulder and gave me a look that conveyed sympathy, telling me without telling me he knew what we’d shared wasn’t trivial. I wanted to collapse again at that look, but Chad’s body straightened, a lingering bit of self-control that kept him from throwing Grant out.

When Grant left, Chad pulled me into a hug. “Are you okay?”

I remained quiet for several seconds, and then I said, “I don’t know.”

He pulled back and looked into my face, his brows knit.

“You don’t know?”

“I’m in a little pain, but that’s not the problem. I’m ... I had to go to the hospital, and—”

He rolled his eyes. “Right. It’s not a big deal. Big people go to the doctor.” He pulled me to his chest and sighed. “You’ve got to get over this phobia.”

“It’s more than that.”

He waited for me to go on. If I was ever going to let him in, tonight was the open door.

“Have I ever told you about my brother?” I knew I hadn’t. My mother never would.

He looked pensive for a minute. “Maybe. What was his name again?”

“Brandon.”

“Yeah, I think maybe you did, but I don’t remember ever meeting him. I’d like to meet him,” he assured me. “Unless there’s bad blood or something ...”

“No, no bad blood.”

“Then of course I want to meet him.” He smiled, moved a strand of hair back away from my face. The gesture was tender. He was trying.

“I like the couch.” I surprised us both by changing topics.

His eyes lit up. “Yeah? I’d been holding off, hoping you wouldn’t be here that long, but when the time comes, we can sell it. No big deal.” He shrugged.

“No big deal,” I repeated, ignoring his comment about time.

“I’m going to grab a quick shower; then let’s get some rest, put this day out of its misery. I almost lost a case today.”

“Why don’t you go ahead? I’ll check the doors and meet you up there. You can tell me about the case as we fall asleep.”

He kissed the top of my head. “You’re one tough cookie. That’s one of the things I love about you. Nothing ever gets you down.”

I let my lips turn upward, the mask I knew how to wear way too well. “Right. I’m fine.” I knew it was what he wanted me to say. It’s what they all wanted me to say. Almost all.

He grabbed his bag and jogged up the stairs.

My legs moved to the door, but my muscles were heavy and awkward. A breeze stirred the trees outside, drawing my attention to the cool air hitting my thigh. The door was still slightly ajar.

I looked back at the stairs, heard the water come on.

And then I closed the door and locked it.