Chapter 22
Love When It’s Easy, Love Harder When It’s Not
Wyatt
My brain is pulsating. I think even my skull is vibrating. It’s extremely painful, but I’m convinced that it will help.
I’m lying on the floor of our room, leaning all my weight against a tennis ball.
It’s pressing directly against a trigger point of my levator scapulae.
Aria’s book says that you have to do it this way to loosen the nodules that have formed in the muscles, as that’s what’s behind your pain and limited movement.
Now I know that my flashbacks aren’t due to the injury but through being touched by others. Probably some kind of disturbance in my subconscious or something. I mean, someone could find out what really happened last summer.
The door opens and Camila comes in. She looks down at me expressionlessly before walking past and throwing her backpack onto the bed. “I didn’t know you were learning about the Kama Sutra.”
“Funny. I’m healing myself.”
Camila side-eyes me with a raised eyebrow while digging her Spanish book, notebook, and pencil case out of her bag. “Are you so undersexed that you’re expanding your meditative dreams to include what-if sexercises in order to feel better?”
“Man, no.” Turning onto my side to look at her, the tennis ball rolls off. “Things didn’t work out with those PT folks. I’ve got to take care of it myself.”
“Ah.” Her eyes follow the ball and dart to the book on the ground. “That Aria’s?”
“Yep.” I stand up and begin to stretch in the doorframe. The pain is so bad that little black dots appear, and my neck breaks out in sweat. Keep up, Wyatt, keep up. Ninety seconds, the book says.
“I was in her room.”
“Wait, what? When?”
At last, I’m done. I exhale but have to close my eyes a second to collect myself. “Earlier this morning. She fell down the steps.”
“Oh! Is she okay?”
“Yeah.”
My phone starts to vibrate. Both of us look to the ground, where it’s lying next to the book.
“You’ve got a new message from Aria, Paxton. I can’t believe you’re doing this.”
“Worry about your own shit.”
Camila shrugs and lies down on her stomach to start her homework. “What’d she write?”
“That you stink.”
“I know.”
Still wheezy, whether from the stretching or seeing Aria’s name on display, I open her text. Is this the right person for professional kiss-it-and-make-it-feel-better services?
Grinning, I type, Yeah. But I’m booked out. Special appointments for straight-up kisses only at the moment.
Where?
My grin grows wider. Depends how hurt you are. For little things I accept kisses on the cheek, for bigger ones it’s got to be on the lips.
A brief pause, then… It’s really big.
I’ll be right there.
Ha ha. She sends a laughing emoji. You want to talk?
There it is. The question I knew would come sooner or later. I talked with her at the Halloween party, of course, but my voice was distorted.
“Mila.” With a sweeping movement I toss myself onto the bed next to her and put my good arm around her waist. “Intelligent, non-stinky sister who I love more than anything else in the world…”
She jerks her shoulder to get rid of my arm. “What do you want?”
“You’ve got to help me.”
“No.”
“Is there an app that’ll distort my voice?”
“Great idea, Wy. Go all Darth Vader again. Like the lobster didn’t freak her out enough.”
“Please.”
“Just do a google search.”
“I don’t know the name of an app that really works.” Before she can start writing again, I shove my head onto her notebook and flutter my eyelashes. “Por favor, maninha.”
That gets her every time. She sits up and crosses her arms. “Why do you think I’d know something like that?”
“You and your friends do it all the time. I know it. Calling up dudes you all like and hanging up. Calling up dudes you like and acting like the pizza they ordered is going to be late. Calling up dudes…”
“WYATT!” She throws her pencil case against my head. “Come on, man, shit. Give me your phone.”
Wriggling my eyebrows, I hand it to her. She types around for a few minutes before holding it back out to me under my nose.
“Here. Say something.”
“What.”
My phone repeats it back in a deep, manly voice.
“Too creepy. Sounds like a mob boss from the seventies.”
“Okay, umm… Try this one. It’s Justin Bieber. Hold up… Here.”
“Hello.”
She’s right. My phone repeats my words in the singer’s voice. I look at Camila. “All good, right?”
“Totally.”
“And that’s automatically connected to my phone’s mic now?”
“Yep. I set it.”
“You’re the best, sis.” My fingertips are tingling as I stand up and go to sit on my own bed.
It’s only been a few hours since I last spoke with Aria, and she’s in the same house, but this is something different.
She doesn’t know that it’s me, and somehow that means that we’re going to have a second getting-to-know-each-other and honeymoon phase.
My sister sticks in her earbuds as I start to type Aria’s number. Her phone rings three times before her timid voice responds. “Hello?”
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Hello.”
I laugh. “Quite the poem.”
“What?”
“You’re a poet.”
“Oh.” Aria chuckles. “Not really. I mean, I never was any good at that kind of thing.”
“I know.” The words have barely left my lips when I realize the mistake. Damn. Aria doesn’t say anything.
“I mean, of course I didn’t really know it. I just mean, well…” Sitting cross-legged, I rock back and forth like a hyperactive five-year-old until Camila casts me an annoyed glance, and I stop.
“Okay,” she says.
“You sound sad.”
“Oh, really?” There’s a rustling in the background. She must be lying in bed. “Sorry.”
“What? No! You don’t need to apologize for that.” When she doesn’t respond, I add, “What’s up?”
After a long pause, she says, “Let’s talk about something else, Paxton.”
Paxton. Argh. I’d almost forgotten that the two of us aren’t really the two of us at the moment.
“Why?”
She gives a dry laugh that sounds anything but happy. “I doubt you want to hear about my ex.”
I turn onto my side and run my finger over the flowers on the comforter. “You can tell me.”
“Why?”
Yeah, why are you interested, Paxton, you idiot?
“It seems to be weighing you down, and I want you to be able to talk about things with me.”
“But it’s dumb.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, for real. You’re going to think, Man, she’s dumb, and then you won’t want to have anything to do with me.”
“I swear that that’s not going to happen.”
Aria sighs. “Well, fine. We broke up because he cheated on me and I should hate him for it and not feel the slightest thing for him anymore, but…”
“But?” My heart begins to race. Hoooly shit, just one little word, but, and I’m about to implode.
Aria exhales. “But the fact that I am utterly unimportant to him just kills me.”
My excitement bursts like a balloon that’s too big and miserably sinks to the ground.
“I’m sure you’re not unimportant to him,” I say a bit too energetically. “Why would you think that?”
Okay, this convo is going in the wrong direction. I mean, what does this sound like? I’m Paxton, her new lover boy, and yet here I am trying to defend her ex—I mean, myself. That’s not how these things usually go.
“He knows about us. And it doesn’t bother him. He even finds it good. God, I’m so dumb, for real. I can’t believe I’m telling you this. I mean, you’ve got to think I’m totally weird.”
I lean back into my pillows and look at the ceiling. “No. We need time to get over people; it’s normal. I mean, you two were together for six years and all.”
Whoops. There’s no way I can know that, either. Man. I close my eyes and press my fingertips into my eyelids.
It feels like an eternity before Aria replies warily, “Did I tell you that?”
I can feel the adrenaline shoot through me. Think, Wyatt, think!
“Umm, no. Sorry. When you’re on the same team, you kind of end up hearing about those kinds of things.”
“Oh, right.” She seems relieved. “I was gonna say.”
“What?”
“No idea. That you’re a stalker or something.”
“Naw.” A scratchy sound fills the room as I start to run my fingernails across the comforter.
“Listen. I, umm, know… I know that Wyatt isn’t over you.
Not in the least. I mean, not at all. The thing between you and me probably just overwhelmed him, and to cover that, he just acted like everything was cool. ”
Aria’s faltering breaths come through the phone, but, strangely, I can’t seem to get enough and press the phone even closer to my ear. Breathe, breathe, breathe. This is your weirdo ex, and he needs to hear it because he’s simply addicted.
“I don’t know…”
“For sure! He was even crying the last time I saw him.”
I can’t sink any lower. A true sign of how desperately I’m trying not to lose this woman.
“Crying? In front of you all? I don’t believe it.”
Yeah, because you know me and know I’d never do something like that.
Before I can think of a way to get out of this, she takes a deep breath and says, “Why are you even telling me this? It feels like you’re trying to make him look good, but why? I mean, you want to get to know me, right?”
“Umm…”
“Is this some kind of fucked-up thing between you and Wyatt to screw with me or something?”
“Wha… No! God, Aria, no, fuck, sorry. I don’t know; I got the feeling you weren’t quite ready to let him go.
And because I don’t want to let you go either, I wanted to be there for you, even if it takes another ten years for you to be ready.
But I’d be there, you know what I mean? And I will have been by your side all that time, and, umm, no idea, I just want you to be able to trust me and to like me and for me to be the one you talk to when you’re not doing that well. ”
There’s a long, torturous pause where all I can hear are Aria’s deep breaths and Camila’s music wafting over to me from her earbuds in the background.
Eventually Aria gives a bemused grunt. “You’re really weird.”
“Well, umm, hello? I mean, come on, you’re talking with a lobster, after all. What do you expect?”
And finally she laughs. A sweet, crystal-clear sound that digs into my heart and makes my stomach go weird. With a smile on my lips, I close my eyes to take the sound in and hold onto it tight.
“What are you up to today?”
“Dunno.” I can hear her moving around on her bed. A few seconds later, the floor creaks. She must be walking through her room. “There’s a movie showing at The Old-Timer that I’d like to see, but my bestie is visiting her brother in Vermont for a few days, and I don’t want to go on my own.”
“Don’t you have any other friends?” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I realize how dumb they were. I know that she has friends; that’s why it sounds so mean. “I mean, even if you didn’t, that wouldn’t be a big deal.”
From the sound of her voice, I can tell that she’s grinning.
“It’s all good, Pax. I’ve got friends. But Harper’s the only one who can go out with me and at the same time worry about whether I’m feeling okay or not.
When I’m with the others, Knox and Paisley…
They’re so happy in love, you know what I mean?
Not that that pisses me off or anything.
It just makes me get kind of down because I had that once myself and… I miss it.”
Oh man… Her words are a weapon of mass destruction for my heart. It’s bleeding. It’s completely bleeding out, and that hurts, damn it.
“I’ve got to split,” I say, as I can feel a lump in my throat and that kind of shimmer in front of my eyes that’s telling me that lump is going to change into tears.
And because I don’t want that, especially not in front of my sister, I’ve got to cut this off right here.
“Sorry, I’m in a hotel for an away game, and the guys are waiting for me. I’ll be in touch later. See you.”
“Ah, okay, see—”
I cut her off by hanging up. My heart is racing. I blink a few times, swallow, blink again, and wonder why my luck sucks so bad.
Camila pulls her earbuds out and looks at me. “All good, Mr. Bieber?”
“I don’t get it.”
“What don’t you get?”
“Why this is happening to me.”
She frowns. “What do you mean?”
I sit up, wipe a hand across my face, and focus on the rug between the two of us.
“Why did Mom and Dad have to die? Why wasn’t I in control a bit more?
I mean, even just a tiny bit? Then there wouldn’t have been that night two years ago.
I wouldn’t have been blasted, wouldn’t have taken shit, wouldn’t have lost my mind, and wouldn’t have slept with Gwen.
Aria and I’d still be together. Aria and I would be…
Aria and Wyatt. Instead…” My breath quivers as I exhale. “I fucked it all up.”
“Wyatt…” My sister pushes her things to the side, sits up, and comes over to me.
“Hey, stop that. Stop putting yourself down. It’s unhelpful.
What happened happened, and that was a mistake.
But, Wyatt, what you were going through back then wasn’t normal.
From one moment to the next, everything fell apart.
At first you were just a kid, without any real problems, just finishing high school, and then all of a sudden you were a hundred years older.
” She raises her hand and counts her fingers.
“A little sister around your neck to take care of and no more parents, but without any real life plan either, or any kind of concept for building a future, or, let’s be honest, any idea of what to do.
Adult stuff, basically. Things you’d never had to deal with before… ”
She puts her hand back down and looks me right in the eyes.
“You had a breakdown. That’s understandable.
And, you know, maybe that’s what caused a real big fight between you and Aria.
I mean, you got the fire ready, but, to be honest?
Aria’s the one who got it started. She took off.
She didn’t want to know your reasons even though she knew how screwed up you were, even though she knew that there might be some kind of backstory to the whole thing that she should know about.
That it all went to shit wasn’t just up to you, Wy.
She’s got a role, too. Don’t blame yourself for everything, please.
You love Aria, and you’re fighting for her, and that means that you never really wanted it to end.
That you never really wanted to hurt her or fuck up anything to begin with. ”
Her words are a wrecking ball, and the dam breaks.
I press my fingers against my eyelids, but it doesn’t help.
The tears come quickly and powerfully. My shoulders quake.
I don’t know when I last cried like this.
Probably when my folks died. But not holding it in anymore, not digging into myself anymore, is a relief.
Camila hugs me. She lays her head on my shoulder without saying a word while I sit next to her and cry to keep my heart from drowning.