22. June
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
JUNE
Headstones are lined up in the dark, and Eli’s is the smallest, low to the ground, close enough to the grass that dandelions grow over the letters in spring.
Dorien stands three feet ahead of me. He hasn’t turned around since that first glance over his shoulder, when his face told me everything I needed to know.
Swollen bloodshot eyes, split lip, a bruise along his jaw.
He’d been in a fight. He’d been drinking.
He’d been doing what he does every year on this day—Carter always tells me about it—while I do what I do, which is paint until my hands cramp, then come here and stand in the only place I ever truly fall apart.
We’ve been quiet for a long time. I don’t know how long. The moon is higher than when I arrived, which means at least a half-hour has passed. My feet ache from standing. My face is stiff from crying.
I study the back of his leather jacket and the way his shoulders are angled down and caved forward.
He looks smaller than I’ve ever seen him.
Dorien takes up space in every room, filling silences with sarcasm, filling corners with his relaxed confidence that borders on bravado.
Here, he’s a man in front of a child’s grave.
I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again. I don’t even know what I’m trying to say before I say it.
“I-I shouldn’t have told him to go in the van.”
Oh.
The truth is what I wanted to say.
My words are so soft I’m not sure he hears them. But his shoulders move. A flinch, or a breath pulled in too fast.
He doesn’t turn around. “I shouldn’t have… brought money for ice cream.”
My throat constricts. I’ve never heard him say that.
I’ve replayed the ice cream truck incident over in my head a thousand times, a hundred thousand, dissecting every choice, every word, every second where one of us could’ve done the thing that would have saved Eli’s life.
But I’ve always done it alone. The guilt has been mine and his to carry and we’ve carried it in separate rooms of the same house for twelve years.
We didn’t even speak about it at the funeral.
We’ve never spoken to each other about it.
“I told him it would be fine,” I say. My voice cracks on fine. “I looked him in the eyes and said I promise. I promised him everything would be okay. Why did I say that?”
Dorien finally turns around. His face is a mess, but not the way I imagined it would be the handful of times I’ve let myself think about this conversation.
I imagined he’d have at least some of his normal, distant composure.
I imagined the unreadable version of himself he gives the rest of the world.
But his eyes are so red, so wet, and his mouth is pressed into a line that keeps trembling.
This isn’t the Dorien I thought I knew.
“I called him lame,” he says. “He didn’t want to go. He said no and I called him lame because I wanted to impress you.”
A sound leaves me that I don’t recognize. It comes from my stomach, not my throat, from somewhere I’ve kept locked away. My knees bend. I press my palms against my thighs to stay standing.
“He was scared,” I say. “He was scared, and I held his arm and smiled at him, like climbing into a stranger’s van was okay.”
“I told him we wouldn’t hang out with him anymore if he didn’t go. I was a bully.”
“God.” The word rips out raw. “We were kids. We were such stupid kids.”
“Kids who should’ve known better.”
“We were kids.”
“He knew something was wrong with that van. Why didn’t we listen to him?
” Dorien’s voice breaks in the middle and he stops.
His hands are shaking because he doesn’t have gloves on tonight.
I’ve only seen him without gloves when he’s making art.
His hands are bare and trembling, and I want to reach for them, but I’m trembling too.
My hands are so cold I wouldn’t provide him any warmth.
“I should’ve gone for help,” I tell him. “After the van drove away, I wanted to run back to the cabins and I should’ve fought you harder.”
“I held you there because I was too scared to move.”
“I know.”
“I told myself it was to protect you. That the man would circle back and shoot us. I believed that for years.” He swallows. “But I was just scared.”
“I know,” I say again, and I do. I’ve always known, like the way you can see the underpainting of a person even when they’ve glazed over it with years of fake indifference.
His face crumples, and it’s so alarming I gasp. The muscles around his mouth give way, his eyes squeeze shut, and a sob comes out of him that sounds like he’s dying. His whole body folds forward.
I close the distance between us. My arms go around him, and his go around me.
And we stand there in front of Eli’s grave and come apart.
His face is against my hair and mine is pressed into his shoulder, the leather of his jacket cold against my cheek.
I can feel the vibration of his crying through my jaw, into my teeth. My own tears soak into his collar.
We hold each other and we finally, after years of fighting, let the grief do what it wants.
I don’t know how long that lasts either. When we finally pull apart, my arms hurt from gripping so hard. We end up sitting on the ground in front of the headstone, facing each other with our knees touching. The grass is cold and damp through my jeans.
Dorien wipes his face with the back of his hand.
In the moonlight his eyes look more gray than copper, washed out, the warmth drained from the color.
I’ve never seen him like this. Every layer of charm and sarcasm has been stripped away so he’s just the boy who lost his friend and never forgave himself.
Maybe I’ve never forgiven either of us.
“The van didn’t even have a menu,” I say.
He blinks.
“Real ice cream trucks have menu boards, right? How did we not see it?”
“Because we were kids.” His voice is rough.
“But you just said we should’ve known better.”
He doesn’t have an answer for that.
This feels like a moment where Mom might say, “You’re both blaming yourself for something that wasn’t your fault.
He was an evil man who wanted to hurt children.
And yes, everything seems clear in hindsight, but you were kids, honey.
Just kids. That man took advantage of your innocence and ruined it forever. ”
I’m not going to therapy-babble at Dorien right now. And even though I can understand that perspective, it’s still hard to forgive myself.
But…
I take his hand. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
I’ve been angry at you for so long, but I did things too.
I hate myself for how I pushed Eli and didn’t listen when he wanted to go.
” I scoot closer and hold his hand with both of mine.
The tears have returned, but I speak through them.
“I’m tired of this. I’m tired of the hate.
We were just kids, so I don’t want to be angry anymore. ”
His voice breaks again and he hunches forward with more sobs.
“You can’t,” he croaks out. “Please keep hating me. The last time we were on the same side…”
“Someone died,” I finish for him. “But we were children. God, we were just children.”
His jaw tightens, and I can see him fighting the absolution, because guilt is a medium he’s been working in for so long he doesn’t know what to do with his hands without it. I know because I do the same thing.
“The man chose that spot,” I continue. “He parked near a vacation lake full of kids. He played that music on purpose. He painted his van to look a certain way. Kids are trusting, and he knew that. We walked into a trap that was built for us.” I’m saying the words for myself as much as I’m saying them for him.
He closes his eyes. A tear slides down his bruised jaw and he lets it fall.
When he opens them, he seems to remember where we are, on the ground, in a cemetery, in the cold. He pulls away from my touch and pushes himself to standing. For a second, I think he might leave me here, then he offers his hand.
I take it, and he pulls me to my feet. We’re standing close enough that I can smell leather, smoke, and the faint sweetness of bourbon underneath. My hand stays in his.
“I hate myself,” he says, “but I’ve never hated you. I’ve never blamed you.”
I swallow my emotions because I’m too exhausted from so much sobbing. “I’m sorry I blamed you.”
“Keep blaming me.”
I want to pull him into another hug, but then I’m suddenly aware of how vulnerable we both are, and the openness that cracked me apart starts to seal itself back up.
This is too close, too much.
You know what happens when you let someone in.
You know the cost.
If I let my guard down, if I let myself need Dorien, the people I love will pay for it.
Dorien steps back to put space between us. He cleans his face then pulls out his phone. “I’ll get us a ride. We can go back together.”
“No, it’s okay. Cinna’s picking me up.”
The lie is clumsy. It’s almost ten at night and I told Cinna I needed to do this alone. Dorien doesn’t challenge it. He just nods.
I step further away because the need to be in his arms is the strongest it’s ever been. I think of his hand caressing my cheek a few weeks ago, the warmth of his body pressed against mine tonight. And I crave more.
No more pain, or hurt, or anger.
Just hold me, Dorien.
I turn away before I do something that will make him reject me; he already said he wants me to go on hating him. “Goodnight,” I say as I hug my waist.
“Night.”
I walk toward the cemetery gates. There’s a restaurant across the street I’ll sit in for a while, until after Mom and everyone in my house is asleep so I can avoid any questions.
The gravel crunches under my shoes and the sound fills up the quiet. I don’t look back. If I look back I’ll see him standing there and I’ll want to return, and I can’t want that. I can’t let tonight change anything between us.
But halfway to the gates, my pace slows. I press my hand against my stomach where a knot has lived for twelve years, and I notice it’s loosened. Like someone found the tightest fiber in it and pulled one thread free.