Chapter Seven
CHAPTER SEVEN
W HEN L YDIA TEXTED Rory to let her know she was worried about Gideon, Rory knew she didn’t actually have to physically do anything in response to that. But she had felt restless and upset ever since the parade, and time hadn’t eased the concern.
That was how she found herself driving to Gideon’s house at 9:00 p.m. And yes, she knew that Lydia could’ve done that. It was just...she felt sympathy for him. She really did. But her frustration with the entire situation was beginning to boil over. He had come here. And he was still freezing his family out. And at the same time, she had seen the genuine pain he was in. But why come here if he wasn’t going to try and connect? If he wasn’t going to try to work it out?
The lights were on when she pulled up to the cabin, and she could see him through the window, standing in the kitchen. He looked tired. Right then, his expression was unguarded. And she was mobilized by it.
And then, immobilized.
Yes, it wasn’t like her. She wasn’t the one who took action. She was the one who crumbled when a situation got intense.
The truth was it mattered. Because when she had been at her lowest point, he had been there for her. It had been enough for him that she was Lydia’s friend. And as for her...he had been formative. Her feelings would always be tangled around him. Her entire adolescent experience. He had been the source of hope and joy, despair and humiliation. He had been everything. It was clear to her that for whatever reason, he didn’t feel like he was everything now. So maybe he just needed somebody... She let out a long breath, fortifying herself, and then she got out of the car.
Just don’t be beige. Don’t be beige, Rory.
Well. This wasn’t beige. Of course, she hadn’t exactly thought any of it through. Because if she had, her anxiety would’ve stopped her from completing the mission. She walked up to the front steps of the cabin. She managed this property. And that gave her a feeling of confidence, at least when it came to actually approaching the door.
She knocked. He had to have seen the headlights approaching. Or...maybe he hadn’t. There were times when she had a feeling he was detached from what was happening around him.
Of course, she didn’t know. Because, as was becoming abundantly clear, few people in his life actually knew what was going on with him.
She waited.
It took longer than it should have. She knew exactly where he was standing in the kitchen. But finally, the door opened. “Rory,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
For a moment, she was frozen. He looked wild. Angry. Beautiful.
He was still so beautiful it made her heart hurt.
That isn’t why you’re here.
“Lydia said you weren’t responding to her.”
“And you didn’t think that might be by design?”
“I wanted to see how you were. I was worried.”
“You were worried.”
“Well, Lydia was worried and...”
“I hadn’t even seen my sister or my mother for two years before yesterday. I’ve been managing all that time, and they can’t get in touch for a little bit and they’re worried?”
“Something is wrong, Gideon. Obviously.”
“Yeah. Something is wrong. I... I’m this.”
“What does that mean?”
“Fucking hell, Rory.”
“Is it PTSD?”
He looked at her like she was stupid. “Yeah. I suspect there’s some PTSD,” he said.
“Well, don’t be an asshole about it,” she said.
He drew back, and she was shocked at the words that had just come out of her mouth. She felt an unfamiliar fire light in her gut. This was not why she had come. She had come to say something inspirational. She hadn’t come to get mad. But he was being...impossible. Like a hedgehog that had curled in on himself and turned out all his spikes. He was here. So he must want people to reach him, and then he was acting aggrieved when they tried. It wasn’t fair.
“Why did you come here if you don’t want the town to throw you a parade? Why did you come here if you’re just going to ignore your mother and your sister?” she asked.
“You’re not my friend, Rory. You’re Lydia’s. I don’t owe you an explanation for anything.”
“That’s...that’s not fair. You act like you didn’t even know who I was when I came up to the door, but you do. You know that...you were important to me, Gideon. We talked every day on the way to school. You can’t say that we weren’t friends.”
“Yes, I can. I didn’t give much of a thought to my little sister’s friend after I left town.”
His words lanced her chest, because they confirmed all the things that she thought about herself. That she was unmemorable. And she just wanted... She wanted to fight back against that, and he wasn’t supposed to be the one she was fighting. She was supposed to be trying to help. But he was tangled in this. In this endeavor that she was in.
And she felt like fighting. Not crumbling. Like she had done when they had passed out the pages of her diary. Like she had done when those guys had spilled beer on her and made fun of her. She had crumbled. She wasn’t going to crumble anymore.
It was the Summer of Rory. And Gideon Payne didn’t get to make her feel small just because once upon a time he had been her savior.
“Is this what you came here for? To alienate people who love you? Because that seems pretty stupid. It seems to me that—”
“Why do you think you know anything about my life? Where were you when I got injured? Did you call the hospital? Send flowers? Did you come and sit by my bedside?”
The words took her back. Because no. She hadn’t. She had been shocked, she had been upset and wounded. She had been sorry that he was hurt.
But she...
You were hurt that he got married. You didn’t want to be connected to him anymore. You didn’t want to want something you couldn’t have. You didn’t want to be found lacking again.
She hadn’t been brave enough then.
“I didn’t,” she said. Her voice was thin, her throat aching. “Did you want me to?”
He growled. “I just want to be left alone right now.”
“As far as I can tell, you’ve been alone, Gideon.”
“Maybe I deserve to be alone.”
“Then why did you come back? I can’t figure that out.”
“Because I... Because I don’t think I want to die,” he said finally. “And I think if I’d stayed away, I would have.”
The words were like a knife beneath her skin.
“Gideon...”
“I’m sorry.” He looked tortured then. She hadn’t fully understood. She wasn’t sure she did now, but she wanted to. “I don’t... Don’t repeat that to Lydia. Please.”
“Are you okay? I... I don’t want to leave you alone.”
“I’m not suicidal, Rory. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it like that.”
“You did.”
“How come it hasn’t occurred to anybody that maybe I was protecting them from the reality of the last few years? You all think... You all think that I just got better. And I chose not to speak to anybody. That I chose to... What? Get divorced? No. It’s a...”
“What is it?”
He looked at her, and she could see that he was at a loss. That he wasn’t sure what to say. If he should say something at all.
“I won’t tell anybody. Why don’t you talk to me? Why don’t you tell me?”
“Because I don’t like talking about it.”
“What good has that done?” she asked.
“Come in.”
G IDEON WASN ’ T SURE what he was doing, inviting Rory in like that. Because he hadn’t talked to anybody about this. Because he hadn’t been honest with his mom and sister about the extent of his traumatic brain injury. And he sure as hell hadn’t told anybody what had happened after. And thank God, Cassidy hadn’t, either. He didn’t know if it was because she was protective of him, or of that image.
He could see it in Lydia’s eyes, too. He had yesterday at the parade. She’d been embarrassed. That he couldn’t be himself. That he couldn’t put on the show that she wished he would. And he was embarrassed, too. He understood that. But Rory was... Well. She wasn’t his wife. She wasn’t his sister. His mother. And she was here.
Today had just been a shit show. He had been the worst version of himself with every single person he had interacted with and he had continued it with Rory. He had driven down that highway hoping to find a piece of himself, and it was like grabbing at a shaft of light. He couldn’t hold it. He could just stand in it for a moment, trying to get some of the warmth reflected down into his bones. But he didn’t feel it. She was right. He had come back here, and now he acted like he didn’t want anyone around. But the truth was part of him had hoped being back here would lock something into place that was missing, and that hadn’t happened. He was grieving that, maybe.
But the man he was searching for, the man he used to be, was dead.
He wasn’t going to be able to get him back.
Rory sat perched on one of the stools next to the kitchen counter, and he stood back on the other side of the island, leaning against the counter, his arms crossed.
“How annoyed was Lydia that I didn’t appreciate the parade?”
She shifted. “I don’t think she was annoyed with you. I think she was sad you couldn’t enjoy it. Does that make sense?”
He lifted a shoulder.
“I should appreciate the gesture. Once upon a time, I would’ve appreciated the glory.” He shook his head. “I miss caring about that. Sometimes. It made life easy. You need a hit, you go do something that impresses people. And now I just... I don’t give a damn. I don’t know where that went. I don’t know if that explosion blew it right out of me, if it made me realize that real glory has too high a price, or if... Or if it just feels shitty when there were only two of you that lived through that explosion, and everybody else’s Purple Hearts came back with a casket. And you just know... All you had to do was stand just a little to the left because that’s where my friend was, who isn’t here now. There’s no glory in being lucky. And there’s no sense in it, either. While I deserve a parade.”
“Maybe they got parades, too.” She looked hopeful, and he almost felt bad telling her the truth.
“They call that a funeral procession, Rory. That’s what it is.”
“Sorry. I... I spoke out of turn.”
“No, don’t be sorry,” he said, his voice getting hard. “I can’t fucking stand people being so careful around me. It’s either all this bullshit hero’s welcome nonsense or people acting like I’m a grenade with the pin pulled out, and if they make a wrong step, I’m going to explode on them, and I’m sick to death of it.” He put his head in his hands, just for a moment. “I’m sick to death of it being true.”
He let silence lapse between them.
“It’s not loud noises, you know,” he continued.
“What is it?” she asked, softly.
“I know for some people it is. Fireworks and shit like that. Not for me. It’s heavy metal music.”
“What?” She looked at him, bemused.
“Yep. I had my headphones in under my helmet. Blasting Metallica. When the bomb went off, I didn’t even hear the explosion. It was just that music, grinding in my ears while we were thrown to hell. While everything came apart around me. Like a soundtrack. And you know...it’s a...lucky thing that I wasn’t closer. Because obviously there’s no surviving that. But when I went to the hospital, what they saw initially was a concussion. Along with all the broken bones. But when it didn’t get better, they did some CT scans. When the bomb went off, it was like someone had taken my brain and rattled it around my skull. It was like years of boxing or playing football. But the impact happened inside. It’s...”
“You have a traumatic brain injury.”
It was a relief that she’d said it. That she knew what that was.
He needed to say this, because he felt like he was being poisoned from the inside, and it was that feeling that drove him to want to numb things. And that was just so dangerous for him.
He had to talk. Like a confessional, and she was here.
He didn’t believe in signs or the divine so much these days but she’d been the first thing he’d seen when he’d come back to town. And she was the one here now.
That mattered. He needed it to.
“Yeah,” he said. “Like I said, they didn’t figure that out right away. It wasn’t until... You know, for a long time when you are living with something like that, you think it’s because the whole thing was shit. Right? It was shit. I didn’t have my work anymore. I didn’t have my position anymore. I didn’t have my crew anymore. I thought that I felt like shit, that I couldn’t smile, but I didn’t want to be around people because what I had been through was shit. But it turns out it was my brain.”
“Why didn’t you tell anybody?”
This was the hardest thing. Because it was a mix of his own damned ego. Not the one he had now, the one he’d had then. He’d been that all-American boy. He’d been a hero. He’d taken pride in all of it. He’d bought into his own press. Been the grand marshal of his own parade.
He’d believed he was great because other people had told him so. He’d believed he was special. That was a hell of a thing to admit, even to himself. Like he was special by virtue of his birth, his looks, his height, his ability to throw a football. It had all been decimated in that bomb blast.
Then he’d learned the truth. About life and himself, in one world-ending moment.
And he needed to say it. To say this.
“Because a legend is supposed to be invulnerable, Rory. And I’m not. I don’t like this version of myself. I’m not proud of it. I know Lydia wanted me to come and stand there and look at that parade and smile. Take it as my due. Be the guy I was before. I wanted that, too. Maybe that’s the reason I don’t want to see anybody. I thought being here might fix something. I just brought the same bullshit with me.”
He studied her. His little sister’s friend, trying to see if he had lost her admiration for him.
Maybe that was why he’d had to say it.
To see what sweet pretty Rory, who’d written a love poem about him once, thought about him now.
He saw pity there. He didn’t like that. He’d never been an object of pity before. People had envied him.
“If people can’t accept that what you experienced changed you, then they’re the problem,” she said.
“What makes you an authority on that, Rory?”
“Because I don’t think the people around here are infallible. How about that? Because I’ve always been invisible. But I definitely felt like I was more than that. Because I think people like what makes them comfortable. Whether that’s to let somebody like me fade into the background, or to make somebody like you an uncomplicated legend. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be more to you. Just like there’s more to me. At least I hope so. At least there better be.”
“Yeah, but you’re talking about being more than what they think. I’m talking about being less. You can see that I’m not exactly thrilled by the idea.”
“Why does this make you less?”
“Have you enjoyed my company since I came back?”
She blinked. “Not really. No.”
“Thanks for that,” he said.
It was funny, though. Because although she had been young back then, she had always been somebody he had an easy time talking to. She had been effervescent, and nerdy. He had never understood why she hadn’t been able to be herself in school. But maybe... Maybe there was something to that. Maybe it was not unlike him. Like right now. He hadn’t talked to anybody like this in a long time, but for some reason sitting with her he was able to.
She had always been one thing with him and Lydia, and to hear Lydia tell it, she’d been quiet and filled with anxiety at school.
He’d never had anxiety in his life, until his body had turned against him.
He sort of understood now.
“Listen, I can’t guess at what you’re going through. And as somebody who has long wished that they could show a different part of themselves, I know that it isn’t as easy as wanting to. But I... I’m working on changing. You told me back then that I was meant for bigger things than this place. I failed at that. At going and making something bigger. Even though I really wanted to. I got scared. I came home. I quit. Because it’s really hard to break patterns of behavior when they’ve kept you safe. So yeah, I get that just because you don’t like the way that you’ve been acting, doesn’t mean you can just change it. But the truth is you are aware. And you wish it were different. And that means that someday... I think it can be.”
There was something comforting about this. He didn’t necessarily believe her, but it reminded him of something. It reminded him of that time back then even more than his drive to Mapleton had earlier.
“Tell me. Tell me about your plans.”
“I...” She looked down. “I don’t know. I am leaving. I’m moving to Boston. I took a job. I tried to take the safety net away from myself. I tried to make myself a little bit more brave.”
The geographical cure. He had tried that moving here. She was trying it moving to Boston. Did it ever work? He had the hope that it did.
“I have this list of things in my head that I failed at. And before I leave, I want to succeed at them. I know your reputation feels like an albatross. I get that. But when I look at you, that’s not what I see. I see someone who is admired. And for good reason. I want... I don’t want to go out of here as Rory Sullivan, the least memorable Sullivan sister. The most beige human being on the planet. I want to be remembered. For doing something interesting. For being surprising. I want... Maybe I want to be a legend.”
“Except you already know, Rory, the problem with being a legend is that you aren’t really a person.”
She laughed. “I mean, it’s like I said before. Everybody thinks that I’m boring. And I don’t feel like I am. Not in the deepest part of myself. I know it’s not going to actually change me. But I don’t know, don’t you want to be able to choose the way people see you?”
“I never had to think about it before. But yeah. I guess I do now. I wish I could be my old self, but it’s not that simple, because I’m not. I’m angry. About everything. I don’t know how to stop being this angry.”
He told her about his day. How he had scared Riley, how he had alienated the woman he’d intended to hire as the manager.
“Okay. That’s a bad day,” she said. “But it’s not who you are.”
“Who do you think I am?”
“I think you’re all these things. You’re the guy who basically rescued me back then, and the war hero, and the man you are now.”
He wasn’t sure he liked that. Because it was true. Whether he wanted it to be or not. Maybe that was part of his problem. He saw this thing he was now as an intrusion. An imposter. And maybe it was just...him. Maybe he had to figure out how to work with it rather than hoping it would magically change. And everything would go back to being how it was.
“You should call Lydia,” she said.
“I can tell that I disappoint her,” he said.
One thing he hadn’t seen yet on Rory’s face was disappointment.
But right now he saw something he hadn’t expected. Kinship. “When I left college, I know I disappointed Fia. I know what she wanted was for me to fly the nest and find what I was looking for. I felt like she was disappointed in me, because I was disappointed in me. She was disappointed for me and there’s a difference between the two. Even if it doesn’t feel like it then.”
“There’s a difference between dropping out of college and losing your career, marriage and everything else.”
“I’ve never had all that much to lose,” she said softly. “I guess that’s the consequence of living a really big life. Your personal stakes were really high.”
Her words hit a spot inside him he hadn’t known was there. Something hungry for an affirmation that didn’t feel empty. Didn’t feel directed at a man he used to be, but the man he was.
“I don’t know if it was worth it,” he said.
“Then I guess it’s a good thing you aren’t done.”
The moment stretched between them.
You aren’t done.
A year ago, that would have felt exhausting.
Right now, it almost felt like hope.
Rory stood up and started to head toward the door. “Rory,” he said.
She turned to face him, and he felt the impact of her like a punch to the gut. Because when she looked at him, she really looked at him.
Not who he’d been.
Who he was now.
“Thank you,” he rasped.
“You’re welcome,” she said, and then she walked out. And while she left him alone, he didn’t feel quite as alone as he had before.