CHAPTER 38
LIFE REALIZATION #16: ALWAYS DRINK THE MOONSHINE
The fire roared, as did everyone around it. Dinner was over, and the crew had congregated in a loose circle, telling regular stories, roasting marshmallows for s’mores, and drinking ... a lot.
“And I had no idea!” one of the mountain guys said for the fourth time. “Her phone had been ringing the whole time!”
Unprecedented (and unwarranted) laughter shook the forest.
I exchanged a look with Deanna as one guy recounted the tale about how he’d accidentally ridden off with his wife’s cell phone. It rang and rang, but he didn’t notice because her ringtone had been set to bird calls. “She’s an ornithologist!”
I’d only been able to stomach a couple of timid sips of their moonshine concoction—frustratingly called Sex in the Woods—so the stories weren’t that funny, but I manufactured a few guffaws to suit the atmosphere and turned everyone into various digits when I needed to, which wasn’t often because of the alcohol or because I was too preoccupied or because the attention wasn’t on me. It was nice to lean back and watch them all without expectation or pressure to contribute.
“This is good,” William said, a little too loudly, lifting a paper cup to his lips.
Grant peeked into William’s cup. “Slow down, buddy. We’ve got a long way to go tomorrow, and we’re not slowing down because you can’t hold your sex.”
“Oh, I can hold my sex,” William assured him, then told the group a story about a guy who’d accidentally ingested psychedelic drugs and ended up naked in his neighbors’ swimming pool. He definitely couldn’t hold his sex.
As everyone laughed and William embellished, my mind drifted.
Grant loved me.
The three words were on repeat, a reverberating whisper in my ear, reminding me of how much I had and how much I had to lose.
In his arms, the moment’s intensity magnified. The rough bark against my back, the prickle of his mustache, the subtle texture of his tongue, all three contrasting significantly to the softness of his lips on mine and the pressure of his hands on my body, a touch that was both firm and gentle.
I love you.
This was real, more real than anything else in my life, which meant it could hurt more than anything else in my life, which was why I’d kissed him in response.
It had been years, years, since I’d said those words to someone else. After Brandon, my family had stopped saying “I love you.” It’d become a jinx. If you said it, bad things might happen.
Now I was in a nest of emotions I didn’t understand, a part of me near-jubilant, the other part simply terrified. Did I love Grant? Was this what love felt like? I think I did love him. But I wasn’t completely ready for this.
I didn’t know how unready I was until what happened next.
I could’ve sat there all night with his hand in mine under an inky sky scattered with stars that didn’t have to compete with artificial light. And perhaps I would’ve stayed right there and tucked my head into his shoulder if Kellan hadn’t started talking. Her words yanked me back around the fire.
“I hate my brother,” drunk, twentysomething Kellan said. “I wish he was dead. Like seriously, dead.”
Everyone laughed, assuming she was joking.
But for me, all noises in the forest paused. All the laughing faces went silent, like a black-and-white film with subtitles. Kellan hated her brother because he’d ruined her relationship with a really hot guy, who, according to her “overprotective” brother, had been planning to cheat on her.
I wanted to grab the girl’s face and tell her that she should be thanking her brother. Because at least her brother cared. At least she had a brother.
I was forced to bend at the waist and hold my face, the beginning of a panic attack.
I contemplated getting up and taking a moonlit ride, but blood wasn’t reaching my head. I wasn’t sure my head was still attached to my shoulders, and I didn’t trust myself to stand up, let alone get on my bicycle.
Grant’s hand was on my back. I thought his hand was on my back.
“Penelope?” His voice was far away as I shrank inside my skin, all moisture in my mouth evaporating into the night.
I tried to force myself upright, but my body wouldn’t move. I couldn’t control it. My tight lips, of their own accord, managed to whisper, “Sick. Drink. Give me ... minute.” He must’ve heard because his hand was moving in slow circles on my back, returning me to my body, and he didn’t ask any more questions.
I was so hot, yet shivering, as I focused on Grant’s hand and its repetitive arc—right side, bottom, left side, top—as I tried to steady my breathing and pull up the concepts I’d read in Unwinding Anxiety, one of the books Hannah had recommended.
This is science.Defuse the trigger. Distract the mind.
This was a panic attack, and it would pass.
Right side, bottom, left side, top,I repeated in my head as I kept time with his hand.
The laughter somehow gained momentum, relentlessly beating against my eardrums.
This is a panic attack.
I’m not dying.
I’m not dying.
This will end.
I was breathing again. It was passing.
The laughter settled into a hum in the background. I lifted my head, made eye contact with Grant.
His jaw was tight.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his eyes boring into mine.
He knew. He knew where I was, in my head, in the past. With Brandon. And he wanted to protect me, but he didn’t know what to do. That was what that look was, pain. I was hurting him.
The story, Grant’s stomach bug, his understanding, the declaration of love. It was suddenly all too much. A little demon inside me chanted: Escape, retreat, bury. I rubbed my sweaty palms on my pants so fast they burned and then pushed to standing.
“I’m going to the bathroom. Then to bed.” I didn’t wait for a response but moved as fast as my unsteady legs would propel me.
Escape, retreat, bury.
Another roar of laughter made me jump, and I nearly sprinted the remaining twenty feet to the door, where two painted figures told me I’d made it to the camping facilities.
It took me nearly twenty minutes to compose myself enough to emerge from the bathroom, and I headed straight for our tent, which was large enough to accommodate the four of us. Inside, Deanna was already tucked into the sleeping bag to the right of mine, and Grant was sitting with his legs stretched out in front of him on top of his bag to the left.
Deanna propped up on her left arm. “Grant and I were giving you five more minutes before I came to make sure a bear hadn’t pulled you out of the bathroom and run off. They started the ghost stories out there, which was my cue to say adios.”
I couldn’t laugh. I managed a pathetic smile, but my face was numb; I wasn’t even sure the corners of my mouth had lifted. At least it was dark, and if I was lucky, they wouldn’t be able to see what my splotchy face was doing.
“Can’t hold my liquor, I guess.” It was far from the truth—I’d held my liquor better than I’d like to admit on a few too many nights—but the thought of telling them the real reason I’d had to rush to the bathroom risked me having to do it all over again.
“Pen, are you all right?” Deanna asked. Curse her empathy.
Grant covered for me. “She needs rest.”
Deanna opened her mouth, but as my eyes adjusted, I saw him give her a slight headshake. She didn’t ask any more questions. And I was very, very grateful.
Some part of me registered that I was overreacting, but how do you stop doing something you’ve always done?
I’d been wrong and naive. This wasn’t easy. I wasn’t the new person I’d told Chad I was. That Old Pen had remained lurking under the surface, waiting for the trouble, the I love you, the I want my brother to die. I wanted to crawl out of my body; I was sick of myself. Because I knew Grant loving me was a good thing. But I didn’t deserve his love, and even if I could convince myself I did, he didn’t deserve to be tied to all my emotional issues, the ones ready to spring forward at the worst moments. And I knew Kellan was joking, but her words had been a knife, barely having to touch my old wounds before they ripped open and everything poured out.
William came in, and there was hushed discussion I only half paid attention to. When the interior of the tent fell silent—the outside still annoyingly loud—Grant whispered, “Good night.”
His hand squeezed mine.
I squeezed his back, words wedged in my mouth like a shoe that wouldn’t come off.
His breath on the side of my face was warm and as soothing as anything could be for me in that moment. And I wondered if I should let him go, free him from all this, from everything inside me that would put that look of pain back on his face. He’d been through just as much as I had. He didn’t need anything else. He didn’t need me.
On my back, I tucked the edge of the sleeping bag under my chin and stared at the top of the tent. A warm tear tickled my face as it slid down my cheek. I resisted the urge to wipe it away.
The cackles and gasps of the others outside the thin fabric were far away. Kellan’s drunken, thoughtless comments had taken me back to my childhood home, when my mom had sat down on the edge of my bed and told me my big brother had gone to heaven. Just before, I’d put away my toys, loaded the dishwasher, eaten my vegetables—even the ones I didn’t like—because I’d told God that’s what I’d do if only Brandon could come home. But he didn’t come home; he was never coming home.
I swallowed the ball of bitterness that had crawled up my throat and turned onto my side, wishing I’d had more of that moonshine.