Chapter 17 Fireworks
SEVENTEEN
Fireworks
For better or worse, I take Helen’s advice and don’t contact Tristan yet.
She’s right—I need to get my shit together first because right now, I’m bad company.
Once again, my world has shifted on its axis.
The things that once held me in place—West, Jayne, Liam, the bar, the dissertation—those things were my gravity.
With all of them gone, it’s easy to let myself go.
To be completely transparent, I did not expect getting my shit together to take as long as it actually did. If I’d known, I might have done a few things differently, but it went a little like this.
I started drinking. A lot. I nearly stopped eating altogether.
I lost too much weight. My hygiene became questionable.
I grew a full beard for the first time. I turned down dinner with Helen week after week.
I didn’t call anyone. I didn’t get called by anyone.
I ceased to exist. Physically and, you know—existentially.
It was your basic downward spiral, and I’ll spare myself from describing most of it.
I’ll just say there was very little self-reflection and a lot of wallowing.
In a way, it felt sort of inevitable. Like this thing that was chasing me for so long finally caught up to me.
It was more than apathy, and that seemed like a good thing at first because at least I was feeling something, I wasn’t numb.
But when I realized what I was feeling, I couldn’t shut it off anymore.
Self-loathing.
February passes with day after day of brown lawns and bare trees. Gray skies and rain. I think constantly about the years since I came back to Austin and everything I should have done differently. Every choice I made that was wrong. That hurt someone. That hurt me.
Literally no one is better off since I came back. Even West. He wouldn’t have gone to jail if I’d gone home with him that night instead of leaving the bar with Jayne. And Helen? She was worried about me when I was gone, but now she’s seen up close what a colossal disaster I’ve become.
I stop painting. I watch a lot of TV. I look for another city to live in.
One where I don’t know anyone and might be able to start over, but then I realize I’d still have to take myself with me, and I don’t like me very much, it turns out, so what difference does where I live make?
I eventually come to a few conclusions about myself.
I am alone because I’ve been raised to be.
This is where my life has been headed. My path, as it were.
My short exposure to living with people turned out just like it did with the isolated chimpanzees.
I can’t hang. I’m too shut down, too walled up, too terrified to risk caring about something when I know losing it would exact a price I don’t have what it takes to pay.
In my heart and in my head, I’m still stuck staring at that mortar and pestle, wondering if I’ll ever be allowed to sleep again.
I’m afraid of what’s in store for me if I can’t find a way out of this hole, but I’m more afraid to ask for help and be forced to face the truth about why I am the way I am.
My most depressing thought is she was right about me.
She saw what I was and needed to incapacitate me somehow.
I’d hurt her in some way that I had no control over, but her mother’s instinct told her I would go on to hurt everyone who crossed my path.
She tried to break me, but I hadn’t let her, and maybe I should have.
One day in March, after a Game of Thrones level winter—the sun comes out again.
Remember Gretchen from the party? My flirty teaching assistant?
I know, I know.
This guy…
Does he always need a pretty girl to feel better about himself?
I mean—I need something. Although in my case, it doesn’t need to be a girl. It just happens to be this time.
Look, we get there the way we get there.
I’ll get there.
I’m getting to it.
Gretchen is the first person I allow to reach into the dark water I’m drowning in and pull me out.
She refuses to give up until I’m breathing again.
She’s CPR. A life-saver. She said, and I quote, “You are way too hot to grow a beard and waste away.” She was the first person in months who was brave enough to call me out on not being okay.
The fact that she even took a second look at me when I couldn’t face myself in a mirror is a miracle by itself.
Gretchen’s also got a light inside her that reminds me a little of Tristan’s—a certain way she moves through the world that makes me want to give life another look.
Anyway, she gets me out of the house. She gets me semi-interested in things again.
She ensures that I don’t miss the coming of spring and how great Austin looks and feels this time of year—her favorite.
By the time summer rolls around, we’ve seen a hundred bands play.
We’ve eaten at least five-hundred pancakes after one a.m. We’ve gone to parties, ridden our bikes several dozen times around the lake, and even went to see Shakespeare in the park.
In April, I shave my beard. I get back to the gym and regain some weight.
I wash my hair regularly. I start to move on again.
I don’t fall for Gretchen, though. I’m clear on the friends with benefits thing, and I bring it up any chance I get so she doesn’t think I’m changing my mind just because I let her sleep over.
She also likes to remind me repeatedly that I’m only a rebound from a rough breakup with the guy she’d been with since high school.
We seem to be on the same page, and we’re good coping mechanisms for each other—both out here living life instead of wasting away on Netflix and rye.
My point in all of this isn’t Gretchen, as much as she’s a great person and I’ll be forever grateful to her.
My point is she’s who I’m with on Auditorium Shores on my twenty-eighth birthday, the Fourth of July, listening to the symphony playing in the distance, eating sandwiches, and waiting for the fireworks.
If it weren’t for her getting me off my couch, I might have never seen Tristan again.
It happens when I’m coming out of the portable bathroom and resisting the urge to roll around in the grass to get the smell off me. I’m inhaling the hot, fresh air, trying to plot my path back to Gretchen when there he is.
With half the city in the park along with all their kids and dogs, my gaze finds Tristan Chase on the paved trail by the lake walking in no particular hurry, alone, looking out at the water.
He has on a light green shirt—well, not green exactly—what it is exactly is the color of his eyes.
That soft, light turquoise. I stare at him for too long—to make sure.
You know—that I’m not dreaming or having a reaction to the heat.
Of all the gin joints in all the world, right?
Has Tristan finally made it into my fishbowl?
The moment I start toward him, that familiar desperation resurfaces. There are too many people—too many ways I can lose him in the crowd.
And I won’t lose him. Not this time. This is happening for a reason.
When I’ve got him within reach, I gently wrap a hand around his forearm. He stops suddenly and looks back at me with affronted eyes.
I might as well be tapping on his window.
His lips part when he recognizes me. He blinks a few times, and we stand for a moment, staring at each other.
I get lost in the colors of him, the sharp definition of his lips. The pain in my chest is a knowable thing now. Turns out it isn’t a crush. It’s the result of his iron grip on my heart.
Without thinking too much about it, I do what I should have done when he turned up in my class. I put my arms around him, drawing him into a hug. It’s the first time I’ve held him in nearly four years. “Hi,” is all I say.
His stiffness lasts for less than a second, and then he’s hugging me back.
He exhales. His hands on my back rub my shoulder blades and squeeze.
His head leans against my neck. His presence seems to curl itself up, concentrating itself in the center of me.
It’s a phenomenon that feels intensely personal.
Almost as though he was projecting for the world as he walked, but here in my arms, he exists only for me to know.
My eyes close as that same feeling I got when I held him in the ICU room years ago floods me once again. Calm. Home.
“Happy birthday, Archer,” he whispers.
“Thank you.”
With that said, he begins to pull away. I hold onto him, not letting him go too far. Face to face with him, I find I’ve got no words to put a voice to, so I take a deep breath.
He frowns at me like he wants to say something, but he remains quiet.
“Go ahead,” I tell him.
But he only shakes his head. His lips press together, and he looks away, out at the lake. Just like in the painting. Just the exact same way he looked out at the city when we spent the night at The Four Seasons. I should have known he wouldn’t be happy to see me.
But he’s not letting go, and the Gordian knot still hangs from his neck on the black, silk cord.
“Are you here by yourself?” I ask, encouraged by the necklace if nothing else.
“I’m with Connor.”
Of course he is. “Can I walk you back to him?”
“I know the way. Did you need something, or are you just saying hi?”
“Do you have a minute to talk?” I ask as I try to gauge how best to go about convincing him to give me one more chance to get this right.
“I should get back.”
“Please don’t.” My hands tighten on his waist. He looks down at them as though he has no idea what’s touching him. “I need to talk to you.”
“Since when? About what?” he asks. The words have an edge to them.
“Do you want me to get into it now, or can I call you?”
The shift in his expression is a brutal assault. “Call me?”
I take in what’s left of the air on earth. “Can I?” I ask again.