Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
Bower
Last night I’d let the cold water flow over me. Part of me had enjoyed the stream of water pelting my body. It’d provided me with another sensation other than the anxiety pounding my body with every pop of a firework that had shot into the sky.
Of course, I knew they were fireworks, but that didn’t make it any easier.
They sounded just like gun shots, and gun shots brought me back there, to places I didn’t want to go that made my heart beat out of my chest and sweat cover my body.
Nothing could change this. Every Friday I was there, shower on, fan on, door closed, hiding from the noise and the memories that clung onto me, refusing to leave.
Mia had tried to help me; she’d showed up and tried to rescue me from the panic I’d been feeling.
She was trying, but I couldn’t let her in. I didn’t want her to get sucked into my life, no matter how badly I wanted her to be a part of it.
I wanted things with her I could never have.
Things I could never give her. Mia wanted a family; she wanted a supportive partner—something I could never be.
There’d always be that loud sound out of left field that took me out.
I’d have to avoid fireworks for the rest of my life.
No late nights at the ballpark, no Disney World firework shows or shooting off rockets on the Fourth of July with my kids.
I’d tried to explain that to her the best I could last night, and I’d ended up yelling at her.
Me pushing her away was what was best for Mia.
She was leaving and would go back to her real life, which differed completely from the resort fantasy life she lived once a year.
She deserved her real life, not being stuck in a false fantasy with a fucked-up boyfriend.
There was a strange tapping sound. I lifted my head from my pillow. It must’ve been the breeze hitting a branch against my window. I laid my head back down onto the wet pillow. I hadn’t changed out of my clothes after getting out of the cold shower, just climbed under the covers.
“Bower?” Mia’s voice traveled through the door. “I know you’re in there.”
I lay there frozen. I was both embarrassed about last night and embarrassed that I was still lying in bed this morning, instead of going after her before she left.
“I’m about to leave, and I…I don’t want to.” I could hear her feet shuffling on the step. “I don’t want to leave like—when we’re like this.”
I sat up slowly. My body ached from the way my muscles had clenched last night. “Mia…” I started.
“Bower, I just want you to talk to me.”
“Don’t keep your family waiting,” I said.
“They’re fine—”
“Mia, what you saw last night. That’s me.
That’s my reality every Friday—sometimes other days too.
Anything can set me off.” I kept my eyes on the floor.
I couldn’t bring myself to look toward the door, where I might see the shadow of her feet beneath the threshold.
“I don’t know why I thought I could be with you… be normal with you.”
“Bower—”
“That was my mistake, my fault. I shouldn’t have taken your virginity, taken that away from you. I didn’t deserve to.”
I could hear Mia sniffling from the other side of the door. I couldn’t stand that sound.
“I think you should go.” I raised my voice. “Go home and find someone who isn’t a fuckup like me.”
“Do you really mean that?” Mia asked, her voice wavering.
“Yes!” I shouted. If this was what it took to push her away, then I would.
Something clattered across the hardwood floors, rolling and bouncing along the planks.
I stood up in my chilled, wrinkled clothes. I should’ve dried myself off or at least taken my clothes off before I climbed into bed last night. I just hadn’t had the willpower.
The lamp next to my bed had a pull chain, and my hand fumbled to find it in the dark. When I found the metal ball, I pulled down quick, turning the light on, illuminating the room. In the middle of the floor was a red, smooth pellet—some sort of rock.
I picked it up, turning it over in my hand. An agate.
A strip of light shone from under my front door, the gap I’d been meaning to fix with rubber weather stripping. She’d slid the agate beneath my door.
The agate was red, with lots of different bands. It was warm against my skin, like it had been in her hand.
A memory played behind my eyes. Mia and me on the boat fishing, Mia and me laughing at something that really wasn’t all that funny, Mia and me building cairns along the lake. Her placing the exact agate I had in my hand on top of her cairn.
She’d kept it. For fourteen years, she’d kept it with her.
Where had this rock been all these years? The bottom of a drawer? Tucked away in the back of a closet?
No, that she had it here with her on vacation meant that she kept it somewhere close. Maybe a purse. She’d carried a piece of me, a piece of Agate Harbors, with her all those years.
I stumbled toward the front door, twisting the knob, and pushing the door open. It slammed against the side of the cabin before bouncing back and hitting me in the chest. I scanned the area, hoping to catch a glimpse of her blonde ponytail swaying back and forth.
She wasn’t there.
I curled my fingers around the rock in my palm, gripping it tightly in my hand, feeling the warmth of the rock that had come from her body. This was for the best. She deserved better than me.
Car engines roared as guests left Agate Harbors. It was checkout day.
The week was over.
Mia was gone.
“B4.” I was less than enthused, and the crowd knew it. “B4.”
“Bingo!” A female voice rang out from the crowd. My head shot up, as if it could possibly be Mia.
These days any female voice would do it—make me turn around, stop any conversation I was having to see if it was her. It never was. I deflated each time it wasn’t her, shrinking further into myself.
She was gone. She had left two weeks ago and wasn’t coming back. I let the agate I kept from her fall through my fingers inside the pocket of my shorts. It was the only thing that grounded me nowadays.
I handed out a coupon for a free Popsicle to the winner. We had an awful amount of orange Popsicles in our freezer. It was everyone’s least-favorite flavor. Every time I restocked the freezer, they sat there as a reminder that Mia wasn’t here to eat them.
“That concludes our bingo game,” I said, monotone. “We’ll be tie-dying shirts later today, at two o’clock at the lodge. See you all there.”
I couldn’t put enthusiasm into my voice. I had one tone these days: boring.
Chloe had told me I looked miserable the other day. She wasn’t wrong. I was the guy who’d lost the love of his life, who had a grandmother who was disappearing before his eyes, and who had a struggling resort to run. Things just weren’t going my way.
Grandma had been getting worse. She hadn’t recognized me in weeks.
Grandpa had been off fishing on the lake more than ever.
The resort was almost entirely being managed by me.
I could lie and say it was going well, but it wasn’t.
Thank God I had Caleb and Dean holding the resort together.
Dean kept the drinks flowing, and Caleb kept the toilets flushing.
Chloe had been a godsend too. She’d taken over much of the care of my grandma, even though she was due any day.
“How’d bingo go?” Caleb asked as he caught up with me on my way back up to the lodge. He had a plunger slung over his shoulder, like a lumberjack with an axe. A real Paul Plumber.
“As good as you’d imagine,” I said. I carried the bingo supplies in a crate, ready to shelve them until next week.
“Bower, stop.” Caleb grabbed my arm, willing me to stop my stomp back up to the lodge. “You’ve been moping around this place since she left.”
“I fucked up, Caleb,” I said. “I let everything get the best of me.”
Only Caleb knew what I meant when I said everything. He knew what everything was, how it affected me daily. I knew it affected him too, just not the same way.
“Did you explain to her what was going on?” he asked. “I’m sure she’d understand.”
“I did. I told her I wasn’t going to be able to make her happy.”
“You said what?” Caleb asked. “Bower, you could make her happy. You could have a wonderful life together if you got the help—”
“No one’s going to be able to help me!” I snapped.
“If you’re yelling at me, I think you should give therapy, a support group a try,” Caleb said.
His calm tone only further infuriated me.
“You shouldn’t be this angry, this upset.
You shouldn’t lose the girl over this. Mia’s like Chloe.
She wants to help, to understand you. It’s you getting in the way of that. ”
I threw the crate onto the ground. It landed with a loud thud, the metal ball cage making the loudest screech. I hoped it broke. I hoped I never had to run a game of bingo ever again.
The lodge wasn’t far away. I stomped over there, not looking back if Caleb was following me. Anger and embarrassment steamed inside of me. My friend had called me out. Everything he said was true, even if I didn’t want to believe that just yet.
A gust of wind blew the towels that were hanging on the clothesline. Grandpa was standing behind them, a clothespin in his mouth. There he was, carrying on the love of his life’s tradition of fresh air-dried towels, even when she couldn’t.
“Bad game of bingo?” Grandpa asked as I stomped past him. I felt like I was six years old all over again, mad about something trivial yet still important to someone who was six. “Say, I thought I’d see Mia around here still.”
I stopped stomping and dug my shoes into the grass. He knew Mia had left, but I’d been avoiding him for the past two weeks.
“Mia went home,” I said.
“Why, Bower?”
I turned around. “Because I’m fucked up, Gill.”
Grandpa paused and visibly let out a breath before tossing the clothespin he had in his hand into the basket of freshly washed towels. He walked over to me, standing before me, looking up. I had been taller than him since I was fifteen, although that never intimidated him.
Grandpa pressed his index finger into my chest. “Get help, or lose her.” He pressed his finger harder. “This’ll be the biggest mistake of your life, Bower. Forget getting arrested—this one will haunt you forever.”
I recoiled like I’d been struck, his words hitting me harder than a hand ever could.