Chapter 34
34
NOW
UP THE BOARDWALK. FAR FROM the rocks. Far enough to guarantee no one could see me. Veering left, deeper into the woods, holding nothing more than a flashlight and the heavy weight of regret. Dinner roiling about in my stomach.
No more than ten feet from the boardwalk, I tripped and fell. Hands and knees. I started to retch. The tequila and whipped cream…it was sloshing about inside me, sickening me, like a sailor being tossed back and forth on a wavy sea.
“Fuck,” I groaned. I retched again.
I don’t want to be here , I thought. I should never have come. Should never have left the safety of New York. I knew this would happen. I knew it would happen, but I went against my better judgment. Now look at me.
I gave up. Collapsed into the mud. Rolled over. Faced the sky. The moon glowed high and bright, a mockery of my crumpled form.
I knew Henry was coming long before I felt him. He settled over me—a chill and a shiver, a cold blanket trying and failing to protect me from the night air. Normally, I would have run. Hopped to my feet and sprinted from the trees as fast as I could. Not this time. This time, I stayed. Blinked up at the moon.
Tears pooled at the edges of my eyes and dripped down my cheeks.
“I know you’re there,” I whispered, but nobody replied.
—
“ELIOT?” THE VOICE CAME FROM far away. I knew it was Manuel from the way he said the first vowel of my name. “Jesus, Eliot, are you okay?”
Heavy clunks as his flipper-like feet pounded through the trees. Dirt puffing as he landed on the ground. His face above me, silhouetted by the night.
“Are you…wait. Are you crying?”
I didn’t respond.
“What happened?”
I shook my head.
“What happened ?”
I didn’t say. I couldn’t.
I’m not who you think I am.
My lungs caught a sob as it rolled up my stomach.
Manuel hesitated. Then he leaned over and gathered me into his arms. I went limp. He untangled my heavy limbs and folded them to his chest like a blanket. All of them, all of me. Legs bound by the curve of his elbow. Head cradled in the soft hollow of his palm. Eyes shielded from the moonlight. He started to walk.
Don’t let him do this , the voice said, but I was too tired to fight.
“Where are we going?” I mumbled into his shoulder.
“To bed.”
—
MY BODY BOUNCED GENTLY AGAINST Manuel’s chest. When we reached Little Lies, he said, “We’re here.”
I didn’t move.
“Eliot?”
Into his shirt, I whispered, “I can’t do this.”
“What?”
“I can’t do this.”
He gently set my feet back on the boardwalk. He peeled my head back from his chest and cradled it in his hand. His eyes searched mine. “What do you mean?”
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.
“Are you talking about you and me?”
I didn’t know how to respond. I looked at my best friend’s face, but all I saw were the words inside my head.
Vile.
Disgusting.
“No,” I said.
“No what?”
“No.” I shuffled backward. “I mean…yes. I’m talking about us.”
His hands quivered in the space between us, like birds lost midflight. “I don’t understand.”
My chest twinged. I pretended not to feel it. “I didn’t talk to you for three years, Manuel. Three years. What does that tell you?”
“You were hiding.”
“No. We aren’t family. That’s what it tells you. Maybe it feels like we are because my sister fawns over you and Wendy gets all Mother Hen when you’re around, but guess what? It doesn’t mean anything . My mom tells everyone they’re part of our family after she’s had enough to drink.”
I knew that the hurt he wore was a hole filled for the last decade by my family.
I also knew that I couldn’t tell him so, because to draw him closer would be far crueler than to push him away.
“All that stuff when we were kids?” I said. “Her inviting you over all the time, taking you on all our vacations, basically adopting you? That had nothing to do with you. Nothing. That had to do with grieving her son.”
Manuel took a step back.
“All of that—it was about Henry.”
Another step back.
“There was a hole in her life, and you filled it. Not because you were special—because you were there. You could’ve been anyone. You could’ve been a girl or a dog or a sad little homeless kid or even a fucking houseplant. Okay? That’s the truth.”
“Wh-why are you doing this?”
“I…” Taco started to inch back up my throat. “I just…”
Let it sit.
Let it hurt.
This is your fate.
“You know what?” He leaned his massive frame over my head and pushed open the screen door. “Don’t answer that. I don’t care.” He held it open, and I stumbled inside. “We’re done here.”
He let go of the door. It swung shut.
Something sharp stabbed my calf. The corner of my porch bed. I closed my eyes and leaned backward. The corner pressed harder. I felt the shallow crater it made in my flesh. When I opened my eyes and looked down, I didn’t recognize my feet as being attached to my body.
We’re done here.
I crawled into bed and pulled the comforter up until it covered my entire body, like a morgue sheet. Like a dead body finally giving in to its fate.