42. BODI
42
I ’m in love with Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey.
I’m sure no good ever came from anyone who said that, but it’s true.
Who knew that a bottle of this cinnamon tasting elixir could fix everything?
Luckily, I found my uncle’s stash in the shed. This boy has now run more Fireball through his veins than blood and I’m loving it. My vision is a bit blurry, but the world has been a bit bleak lately anyway.
I blink, staring into the fire as I sit on the boating deck, my neck bobbing slowly from side to side since it seems to be a bit hard to keep my head up.
I better not fall in because I’m pretty sure I’m in no condition to swim right now.
“I’m not so sure this was a good idea,” Hunter’s voice vaguely registers beside me but I’m too drunk to find the face that belongs to it.
“Bringing up memories?” That’s Jason.
“Shut up, asshole.” Hunter again.
“It does bring back memories, though,” Jensen chuckles while I take another swig of my precious bottle of Fireball. I think it started with shots, but I’m more than content with having a bigger supply in the palm of my hand.
“I was not as shitfaced as he was.”
“Are you kidding me?” Jason snorts. “You went on a three day bender. He’s only on day one.”
I nod approvingly. “Give it time.”
I have no ambition to get out of this state. I feel awesome!
“Okay, that’s enough.” The bottle sitting in my hand gets yanked roughly out of my hand.
“Hey!” I whine, doing my best to bring my head up. Or mostly, because it’s too fucking hard. Damn, I haven’t been this drunk in forever.
“Look at you. You look like a fucking idiot.” Jensen gives me a look of contempt, and I snort at his funny scowl.
“Oh, yay! We can be twins!” I blink, wondering why more Jensens seem to appear in my line of sight. “Wait, you are already twins. Boehoe, Jensen!”
Ha-ha, I’m funny.
Fireball makes me funny.
Not Kayla funny. But still funny.
I haven’t thought about her in at least an hour, this stuff must really be working.
Fuck, now I’m thinking about her.
She’s so pretty.
Her curves. Her brown hair. Her tits. Fuck, I’d give a whole bottle of Fireball to suck on her tits, and I’m fucking attached to my bottle at the moment.
“Shut up, you moron. When are you going to get your shit together?” Hunter booms. Damn, the motherfucker doesn’t have to be this loud.
“I don’t know what that means,” I titter. I haven’t felt like I had my shit together in weeks, but I’m perfectly fine right now.
“It means you should stop feeling sorry for yourself and call Kayla.” Jason says, always the voice of reason.
“What? Nooooo,” I drag out the word, doing something like waving my hand in the air to brush away whatever he’s saying. By the mention of her name, her face flies through my mind and my heart fills with something good.
“Oh, Kayla, Kayla, Kayla.” I smile. “I miss her smile.” Like a dodo, I look up at the sky, my lips lifting like they are held up with rope. “And her eyes. She has such pretty eyes. When I look at her, it’s like diving into a clear water lake.”
“Yeah, such a shame you don’t love her.”
“Oh, I do,” I confess, unable to detect his sarcasm in the state I’m in right now. “I just can’t tell her. Sssh.”
All their eyes widen, though I have to blink a few times to know for sure.
“Why are you all looking at me like that?” I whisper.
“And here I thought you were the smart one. You’re the one calling me out on my shit. Not the other way around.” Jensen yelps.
“I am the smart one!” I say with big gestures, waggling in my chair. “That’s why we can’t tell her!” My head starts to spin, and I let it fall forward.
“Are you okay?” Jason’s voice is laced with worry, and I feel his hand on my back.
“Fine,” I huff, snapping my head back up. “Oh, no. I’m not.”
Before the last letter leaves my throat, my dinner lands between my feet. My stomach cramps in agony as I keep hurling like I just drank acid. I don’t think I’m still loving Fireball. The bitch is turning on me like everything else in life. I keep hunched forward, my throat gagging until there is no more bile left in my stomach, and I sit up with my eyes closed.
Oh, no. Don’t close your eyes, Bodi. The world spins around like one of those damn carnival rides I hate. And Kayla loves.
“I’m going inside, find a bucket to put beside his bed and make some coffee.” Jason announces, before it’s followed by footsteps moving away.
“Fuck!” I roar, keeping my eyes focused on the stars above me to keep me from falling from my chair. “Fuck!”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I breathe, blinking to stop the sky from tumbling around me.
“You already are, buddy. Okay, come on. Let’s get you away from the water because you’re freaking me out with your swinging and swaying.”
“I’m not going to fall.” I slap Hunter’s arm away.
“You better not because you’re a grown ass man and I won’t be able to pull you out.”
“You suck,” I blurt.
They all suck. Everyone sucks. Except for Kayla.
Kayla is the best. She’s sweet. She makes me laugh. She makes me better.
“I’m going to let that one slide for now. Get your drunk ass up.”
Jensen pulls me to my feet. I growl at him, but he ignores me, guiding me back to the porch, away from the water. He pushes me to the porch steps and I rest my head against the post.
“Stay here. I’m going to get you some coffee to sober you up. Stay quiet before you wake up your uncle.”
“I’ll go and find him a hoodie or something, he’s shivering,” Hunter says.
Am I shivering? I don’t even know.
I barely acknowledge them, but when they both disappear into the house, Kayla still runs through my mind. Now that I threw up all of the contents in my body, the man with the hammer seems to hit me in the face and the pain rushes back in, my drunk sarcasm replaced by that familiar ache in my chest.
Fuck, yeah I am a little cold.
But this time, I can’t push it back, literally being too drunk to control anything. Impulsive as this Fireball shit makes me, I pull out my phone, dialing the one number I’ve been dying to dial for weeks now.
I close my eyes with my phone pressed against my ear, the dial tone acting like a lullaby as I think about my girl.
I miss her. I miss her so fucking much, it’s unbearable. It’s hell to get up in the morning. My eyes water, but this time my hand feels too heavy to brush away the tears. For weeks, I’d rather be sleeping than be awake, because at least living in my dreams is still tolerable. At least in my dreams she’s still there.
“Bodi?” If I was sober, I’d probably hear how her voice is all sleepy and gruff, but right now I just hear her voice and it’s enough to jolt my heart alive with excitement.
“Hey, baby.”
“Is everything okay? It’s the middle of the night.”
“I miss you.” I stumble over the words and she sighs. “You’re mad at me.”
“Of course, I’m mad at you, Bodi.”
“I know. I screwed up. But I miss you.” My sudden bravery scares me, wanting to shut myself up, but I can’t. Blame the fucking Fireball.
“I’m dying.” I start to sob, holding my forehead in my hand.
“What are you doing?” Before I can turn my head around, Jensen rips my phone out of my hand.
“Jensen! You asshole! I need to talk to her, dammit! Give me the phone!” I try to get up, but I fall over my own feet before I land on the grass face first.
Oh, damn. That's…wet. But it smells like…fresh grass.
I think my brain is not working very well.
“Fucking hell, Bodi.”
I roll over, crying at the sky while I keep chanting her name like I’m possessed. Because that’s how it feels and it’s tearing me apart. Eating me up from the inside like a parasite I can’t get rid of. I’m merely a shell without her.
“I’m sorry, Keeks,” Jensen mumbles through the phone. “Yeah, he’s alright.”
“No, I’m not!”
Not even a little bit. I’m shivering on the dewy front lawn of my uncle’s home in Maine. Where’s Hunter with my hoodie?
“Or at least, he will be,” he continues. “I’ll take care of him. I don’t know. I’ll ask him to call you tomorrow. Yeah. Sorry.”
No, not tomorrow.
Now.
I need to talk to her now.
But words don’t fall from my tongue anymore.
I close my eyes, sucking in a deep breath of the brisk air of the night before doing it again. The cold gives me chills, but in a good way.
Maybe it will give me some clarity, because my mind is all over the place. Maybe I need the cold to clear the fog. I rest my hands on top of my stomach, the tears still tainting my cheeks until my eyes grow heavy.
Really really heavy.
Slowly, my consciousness simmers away, drifting me off in a dreamless sleep under the star filled sky. It’s deep and heavy, sucking me in like a vacuum, but it feels better than the uncontrollable state I was in when I was awake.
I lie there for I don’t know how long, but it can’t be more than a few minutes because the sky looks exactly the same when Jensen’s foot jerks me awake.
I squint my eyes open and he’s peering down at me, his hands on his sides and a scowl in place.
“You really lost your mind, haven’t you?”
“Pfft, I wish.”
“Get up, Bodi.”
“I can’t.” I roll to my side, placing my palms between my neck and my cheek before I close my eyes again. “Just leave me alone.”
“Guys? A little help?” He shouts after I hear him mutter some words, but luckily for me, the vacuum is strong, sucking me right back to the oblivious state he pulled me out of.
***
When I wake up, my head feels like it’s about to burst any second now. The pounding is excruciating. Like I went to sleep resting my head on African drums.
But the warmth of the blanket covering my body tells me I’m in bed instead of outside on the front lawn where I expected to wake up.
What the fuck happened last night?
Fireball.
Vomit.
Kayla.
Not three words I ever want to see in that order again.
I rub my face, while slowly all my senses seem to come alive, putting me in anguish. My throat is as dry as sandpaper, and the taste of my bile still sits on my tongue, making my stomach somersault. But in a way, I welcome the pain, reminding me my senses are still alive.
I’m not dead.
“Morning, sunshine.”
And now I wish I was. Fuck.
With heavy lids, I lock eyes with my uncle, then close them in hopes that he won’t be here when I open them again.
“Not going to work, buddy.”
Dammit.
“What are you doing?” The stern look on my uncle’s face makes it obvious he’s not talking about my current state. He doesn’t mean, why the fuck are you hangover like you’re still in college? No, he means, what the fuck are you doing with your life?
“I don’t know.” It’s the most honest I’ve been in a while because I truly don’t know. I have no clue what the hell I’m doing, and I hate that feeling. I hate not being in control. Since my father was admitted to Peartree Park, I’ve been wondering if this is how he felt with my mother.
Powerless.
Hopeless.
Helpless.
In the last year, I’ve seen my father wither away, slowly being dragged out of his soul until there was nothing left but bones and skin.
“Wanna tell me why you’re trying to drink yourself to death?”
Uncle Lucas rubs his beard, leaning into the rocking chair of the corner of the room. He looks like the epitome of a lumberjack in his plaid shirt, with one of his boots resting on his knee.
“Because it’s easy?” I pull a face, trying to soften him up a little, but it does jack shit.
“What the fuck happened to my nephew? You know, the one who’s had his ducks in a row since he was fifteen. The one who is the CEO of a multi-million-dollar company. The one who wouldn’t treat a girl like shit.”
Dead. He’s dead.
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s on vacation.”
“It’s not funny, Bodi.” The disappointment in his tone slices through me, lifting all the hairs on my body. “Your father would be turning around in his grave right now.”
“Fuck!” I huff, lifting my body up to settle against the headboard. “Low blow, man.”
He shrugs. Like an asshole. “If it wakes you up.”
His dark green eyes stay fixed on me.
I square my shoulders, trying to hold my own against him for as much as you can while sitting in a damn bed. I know my rigid stance is pulling it off, but I’m squirming on the inside, knowing I won’t win the staring game from my uncle.
He’s always the one who’s been picking up wherever my father left off, and both of them are my biggest example. They represent the type of man I want to be. One loving and caring to a fault, the other fair and just without a filter. I like to believe I’m somewhere in the middle, a product of both of them, combined with the soft touch of my mother, but deep down, it feels like one big lie.
Neither of these men would treat a woman the way I treated Kayla.
I wonder how my father did it. How he loved my mother endlessly, even though he knew she was slipping away more and more every day. How can you give your entire being for something that’s so evidently not eternal.
I promised myself that wouldn’t happen to me, that I wouldn’t let myself fade over a woman, but have a feeling I’ll see exactly that when I find my strength to find a mirror. I’m trying to fade her memory, but all I’m fading is me.
She still sits firmly, and annoyingly, in my head, not even fading a little.
Frustrated, I rub my hands over my cheeks before letting them fall to my lap with a loud thud.
“Why did dad keep taking care of my mom?”
“What do you mean?′
“She was an addict. He clearly wasn’t enough to make her stop using. I clearly wasn’t enough. Yet he kept giving her chance after chance after chance.” My heart thumbs louder with every word I blurt out. “He was the smartest man I knew, but he wasn’t smart enough to see it was hopeless! He was stupid when it came to my mother. She was a lost cause.”
“That’s what you think?” Lucas jumps up from his chair with a flaring rage. “That your mother was a lost cause? That your father was stupid? Did you have your eyes in your pocket your entire life, Bodi? Your father loved your mother more than anything in the world! He loved you more than anything in the world! Your mother loved both of you more than anything in the world! Every single time she was sober, she cried her eyes out, begging your father to help her because she couldn’t lose either of you! Your mother fought her addiction as hard as she could, and your father did what any good husband would do; he was there for her. In sickness and in health, for better and for worse! Don’t you dare taint my brother’s memory with whatever lies you’ve been feeding yourself. Your father did what was best for the love of his life. The mother of his child. YOU! He did it as much for you as he did for her!”
“And look what that brought him!” I roar, matching his energy. “When it was over, he lost his mind over his broken heart!”
The shock is evident on his face. He stays quiet, taking my words in.
“Your father didn’t lose his mind, Bodi,” he says with a shake of his head. “He got dementia. Something completely different.”
“Is it? Because we both know his behavior changed after mom died. He got dementia after she died! She had his heart and when she died, his mind went with it.”
His face freezes, shock flashing across his face until his brows knit together as if a light bulb pops on in his head. His eyes shut briefly while he pushes out the air in his lungs.
“Bodi.” There is a sadness in his voice and his shoulders start to hang. “Your father was diagnosed with dementia when you were twelve.”
What?
My mouth falls open before it snaps back, followed by a discomfort sensation tingling down my skin.
“You’re lying.”
“Why would I lie about that, Bodi? Why do you think we brought you to the states?”
My chest feels heavy as I just stare at him.
“Your father had concentration issues for about a year before that. He went to the doctor, thinking he had a lack of vitamins or something. But when the doctor did some memory tests, he noticed difficulties. Your dad had to go through a number of tests after that.”
Bullshit.
Lucas runs a hand through his hair, the hardship clear in his words. “The doctor diagnosed him with early dementia. At the time, he hid it from everyone, including your mother. He knew he was the only one who could take care of her. He only told me because he knew he couldn’t take care of your mother and you at the same time. It’s why he brought you to Maine. To me .”
“My mother didn’t know?” My voice breaks, and I become aware of the tears that have been running down my cheeks. My throat tightens, the little heaps of air I suck into my lungs becoming less and less with each inhale.
He shakes his head. “He needed to be her rock.”
That’s it? He needed to be her rock?
He says it with a lightness that surprises me, as if there’s nothing else to it. As if you can just decide to be there for someone, defying all odds because you choose the other person.
Because you choose love.
I close my eyes, breathing in as deep as I can, then push it out on one long exhale before I open them again. My father was diagnosed before…before I left Australia?
And he never told her, because he needed to take care of her.
Because he loved her.
“That simple, huh?”
“It’s what you do when you truly love someone.”
“How is that worth it when nothing lasts forever? When everything ends some day and everyone eventually leaves?”
Lucas’s skin bunches around his eyes, and he clenches his hands into fists as I watch his eyes grow moist. “Fuck, we all failed you if that’s how you feel.”
And that’s it. Whatever the fuck is going on, I need to find a way to find a new normal because everything is fucked up.
He pricks his fingers into his eyes, taking in a deep breath. Lucas has always been my big, unfazed uncle. The one who you go to for advice and the one who tells you to suck it up and try again when things are not working out. Seeing him break apart in front of my eyes forms a ball of hurt in the back of my throat that makes me want to scream.
“You’re right,” he continues when he has caught his breath. “Nothing is forever. But love runs so deep that if you’re lucky enough to find it, to find the one person you can’t live without... you don’t care about how many days, weeks, or months you get. Because you’ll take whatever you can get. Because it’s worth it. It’s worth the pain of losing them. Your father knew that.”
It’s worth the pain of losing them.
I bite my bottom lip, holding back the emotion that’s building up behind my eyes. The pain I’ve been feeling for weeks is excruciating, each memory eating me up on the inside. But if someone were to ask me if I’d want to erase them from my mind, it would be a definite no. Because it’s true what Lucas says; they are worth it. I’d rather feel the pain of not having Kayla in my life than not remembering she was there in the first place.
I tilt my head, examining my uncle’s sad expression. “Did you find that kind of love?”
“I did.” His smile is warm, though his gaze is filled with grief. “I never told you, because it was before you were born. We were young, and I was convinced I’d grow old with her.”
Something pulls my heart, and I swallow. “What happened?”
“Car accident. Drunk driver. She was twenty two.” He inhales, then exhales with a closed smile. “Took me a long time to accept she was gone. My best memories are with her, and it still hurts every day. But I wouldn’t trade them for anything else.”
She died. The love of his life died, and yet he still believes in love. He still sits here with a genuine smile on his face, thinking about all he did share with her.
I can’t even bear the thought of a world without Kayla in it. Mine or not.
Oh, man. I fucked up so badly.
“I’m such an idiot,” I moan in a shaky voice. My hands are trembling and my uncle meets my despaired face. “I lost her.”
“She’s still alive.” His stern look softens with sympathy.
“I’ve been such an asshole.” I shake my head. “I totally fucked up.”
He gives me one of those fatherly half scolding, half mocking expressions.
“She answered your call last night. She wouldn’t do that if you didn’t still have a chance.”
What if she only did because it was the middle of the night?
What if she woke up today and blocked my number?
What if I fucked this up too much?
“I’m scared,” I confess.
“We all are, Bodi. But you’re not the type of guy that settles for fear. We clearly caught you short, but we sure as fuck didn’t raise a coward.”
I breathe in sharply through my nose, exhaling through my mouth, trying to get rid of the heavy feeling that still sits on my chest.
I don’t want to be a coward. Hell, he’s right. I’m not.
“What if she doesn’t want me back?”
“Then you fight for her until she does.”