19. Clayton
Chapter 19
Clayton
Archer looked good. Happy. Happier still when he didn’t look at me. That was fine. He could go on pretending that I didn't exist and I could go on thinking about what might be different if I’d never fucked him over.
I missed him. I’d missed him for months. Years. Decades, it felt like. But it was somehow worse with him ten feet away from me, acting like I was a ghost. I might as well have been one.
Tia’s girlish laughter filled the yard. She was a hell of a storyteller. It almost made me sorry that she wasn’t here when I came, but I was happy for this stranger who’d seemed to glow, captivating everyone around her.
I did, however, know Julie. She worked at Bennett’s and she often came over to see Patricia and have coffee. They talked like old friends. Like mother and daughter. I didn’t know either of these women before, but I’m glad they found this place. Their lives on the other side were probably still hard, because nothing’s easy, but they both had a joy that I didn’t think I’d ever get. Included in their little group was a guy named Milo. He volunteered with the girls every now and then, helping them with makeup and hair for interviews. He and his boyfriend, Colby, seemed like nice, stand-up guys and I could tell how into each other they were. They had that starry-eyed, soupy-hearted, so-in-love-with-you expression whenever their gazes met. They were the kind of guys I’d liked to have been friends with, if I could manage to talk to anyone. But I felt see-through. Like I was a spirit haunting the edges of life.
The conversation flowed around me and I didn’t mind so much that I wasn’t included. Ghosts don’t talk, after all. Once in a while, I caught Shane looking at me with that same stony, almost murderous expression. But then he’d glance at Kieran and look away again, take another sip of his beer, and go back to trying to pretend I was invisible.
Archer was better at it than Shane. Honestly, I didn’t know what Patricia had hoped to accomplish by putting us all in the same vicinity. It wasn’t like Archer was going to suddenly forgive me. Things weren’t ever going back to how they were between us.
Patricia put Shane to work barbequing for everyone and that’s when Kieran leaned over.
“You okay?” he asked, his voice pitched low like he didn’t want to be caught talking to me.
“I’m good.” It didn’t matter if it was the truth or not. I wasn’t about to tell him that I’d been sitting here for the past thirty minutes imagining myself to be a ghost.
Kieran nodded and went back to the conversation around us as if he’d never asked at all. It was almost like it never happened, but then I looked up from my drink and Archer was looking at me.
Once upon a time, I’d been able to look at him and know what he was thinking, the way that only best friends can do. That silent language was gone now and Archer was a mystery. His gaze was walled-off and cold. His expression was carefully blank. He looked at me with neither fondness nor disdain, and then his focus slid away and I went back to being invisible.
It felt like a missed opportunity. Like I should have used those five seconds of acknowledgement to beg his forgiveness. The ache in my chest turned into a sinkhole, consuming everything inside me, bit by bit.
“Kieran, you’ve been awful quiet. Tell us what you’ve been up to.”
The mention of Kieran’s name brought me out of my fog and, for the first time that evening, I paid attention.
“Nothing really,” Kieran answered.
Nothing really, just holding me close and protecting me from my own mind and then pushing me away. Nothing really. Just kissing me in secret.
“There has to be something,” Tia probed.
“Well, my truck got stolen. Burned to a cinder.”
“Holy shit!” Tia said. “I’m sorry.”
My gaze went to Kieran, even though I’d tried my best not to look at him at all. Looking at him made my skin tight. It made me want to look at him more, and if I sat there making love-sick faces at him all evening, ghost or not, Archer would catch on.
“I’m not,” Kieran said. “I bought a car and I’m going to take it on a road trip. Maybe a few of them.”
“That sounds like fun,” Patricia said. “Where will you go?”
Kieran shrugged. “Wherever I want. I think I’d like to just drive, you know? Play it by ear. I’ve always wanted to do something like that.”
“Since when?” Shane asked, not in a malicious way, but a curious way. “I didn’t know that.”
Warmth, and a little smugness, bloomed in my chest and suddenly I felt real. I knew something about Kieran that he hadn’t told anyone else, or maybe he had and they weren’t listening.
“Since always, I guess. But it wasn’t relevant before because work and debt, and you get the idea. And then I guess I forgot about it. But other than the whole stolen truck thing, being on the road reminded me that I’d wanted to do that. ”
“It sounds like fun actually,” Shane said. “Now that Vivian runs the bar, I could go with you.”
Kieran’s laugh was dry and humorless. “Or you could stay your ass home and let me go by myself like I’d intended.”
Shane and Kieran locked eyes across the deck and the atmosphere shifted again, this time back to something uncomfortable. Then Shane nodded and the dark cloud lifted.
“I guess that’s fair.” Shane smiled like it was a peace offering. His gaze slid across the space and when it raked over me, it felt like an accusation, like suspicion. I averted my eyes and examined the little potted tree that sat off to the side.
“Why a lemon tree?” I asked Julie.
She brought her drink to her lips and took a sip. “Taylor Bennett could make a dead stick grow. Somewhere along the line, he found out that you can propagate seeds from your fruit and shit, and much to everyone’s dismay, he’s amazing at it. Which is why he gives plants away. He can’t seem to stop himself, but he runs out of room and then has to find homes for some of them. And then suddenly he has more room again. It’s a vicious circle.”
“It sounds nice, though. Growing things, using them to connect with people.”
I missed people. Even before I had the stuffing beat out of me, I was alone. Lonely. Solitude was a gaping maw, swallowing me whole. At first when I came here, nothing much had changed. But then Kieran had come around every second day to make sure I didn’t figure out a way to con Patricia out of her life savings or something. I’d welcomed his disdain because at least it was something.
And then Patricia, with her endless patience, had chipped away at my defenses. We drank coffee together every morning. She always asked if I got any sleep instead of asking if I slept well. We both knew the answer to that. She listened when I talked, and even when I didn’t. Her love language was baking and there seemed to always be snickerdoodles in the house. It made it impossible to want to leave. Others had managed and they were happy. Thriving.
Patricia’s house had become a home to me. At first it had been a room. Almost a jail cell. But slowly, through her kindness, and probably because of therapy, I’d started spending more time out of my bedroom. I helped with small chores, things that a one-armed man could do sitting down or standing in one spot. I’d taken to helping her at the stove, stirring soups and sauces and gravy while she buzzed around taking care of everything else.
Kieran caught my eye and asked me if I was okay again. Not out loud. He mouthed the words to me across the space and, for a split second, it was like we were all alone again, just the two of us. Then the noise rushed in, drowning out the clunky, heavy rhythm of my heart.
I nodded because in this moment I wa s okay. If only I could freeze time and stay in this place where I was surrounded by people, even though two of them hated me. Hate was better than indifference. It was better to be seen and hated than alone and invisible.
It’s why I’d been so happy to find the community center when I was a teenager. People knew me there. They missed me if I didn’t show up for a day or two. They asked about me, and fed me, hugged me.
Kieran appeared in front of me with a paper plate loaded with food. He’d gone to the trouble of fixing a burger for me and scooping up a helping of potato salad for the side. Instead of a plastic fork, a real one had been provided. My confusion must have been written on my face when I took the plate from him and balanced it on my lap because he sat down next to me.
“We use paper plates because they’re biodegradable, but we stay away from plastic cutlery. ”
“Plastic forks suck anyway.” I stabbed into a piece of potato. “What kind of car did you get?”
“It’s a Charger. Good reviews, decent mileage, a trunk big enough to store a couple of dead bodies. Want to go for a ride later?” Kieran asked as though it wasn’t a big deal to be seen with me, being friendly, nice even, in front of Shane and Archer.
I cut my gaze over to them to see if they’d heard, but they seemed oblivious. I was glad that Archer had found someone like Shane. Someone good and worthy, someone who looked at him like he was the best slice of cake, the one with all the icing roses on top with the cherry and extra sprinkles.
They were in their own world, bodies angled toward each other, quietly whispering. Archer smiled, small and shy.
“Yeah. I’d like that.”
“Good,” Kieran said, then he went back to eating. After I finished off my potato salad, I picked up my burger and took a bite and it was then, with a mouthful of food, that I heard Archer speak.
He’d barely said a word since his arrival so his voice suddenly rising up over the other ones got my attention. I realized, somewhat belatedly, that he was talking to me.
I looked up, my mouth so full I had food stuffed in my cheeks like a chipmunk. Archer looked at me expectantly and I did my best to hurry through my bite without choking to death.
“Sorry,” I said. “I missed what you said.”
Archer’s face was unreadable. Blank. Maybe angry. Maybe annoyed. At me? Likely. At himself? Probably. Archer could be hard on himself sometimes.
“I said when does the cast come off? ”
“This coming week. A few more days.” We weren’t best friends anymore. Not ever again. And I missed him like crazy. I missed being able to tell what he was thinking. I missed him not being mad at me.
Suddenly not able to swallow past the knot in my throat, I set my burger on my plate and took a sip of my iced tea.
Archer nodded, then asked Patricia something I couldn’t hear past the buzzing in my ears. It wasn’t forgiveness. It might not have even been an olive branch, but it was something.