Chapter 26 Present Day
CHAPTER 26
PRESENT DAY
July
Under the dim lighting of the Forests’ basement, Wes’s eyes are glassy as he gapes at me. Horror, shock, guilt and the understanding of why I had tried so hard to reach him appear in sequence on his face. The dominoes hit him one by one. The car accident, the abortion, my father’s heart attack and how he wasn’t there for me during any of it.
“You were pregnant,” he says, brow creasing. “You were trying to reach me and I—” He choked. “I didn’t respond. And then yesterday? When we were together? You were freaking out and I didn’t realize. Is that why you ended it?”
“It was good, so good,” I murmur. “Until it wasn’t.”
His eyes narrow as he rewrites the narrative in his head. The story he’d told himself about how I’d abandoned him shifts to one where he also failed me. He leans forward, away from the plush backing of the couch, unrest agitating his body.
“Your life was falling apart, and you thought I’d cheated on you with Andrea.” He squeezes his eyes tightly shut, as if to avoid the thought. “That’s why you didn’t come back.”
“I didn’t handle it well,” I say, wincing. “Everything felt like my fault. I tried so hard to make everyone happy. You, my family. But when you didn’t pick up my call, when Andrea told me she was there with you, it was proof my parents were right. You were my best friend. Even before we were in a relationship. We were always there for each other, through everything.” My voice cracks. “But you weren’t there for me when I needed you, and it felt like I had misread everything. I thought I had experienced us in a way that wasn’t reciprocated. That I was nothing to you but a summer fling. I know I should have handled things better with my family. But at the same time, you weren’t there for me when it mattered. You wrecked me.”
“I’m so sorry,” he says, sorrow painting his expression.
“I needed you to hold my hand, to tell me you loved me during the worst moment of my life. But you weren’t there and I did what I had to do. I needed to not be pregnant, to try to save everything from falling apart. But it did, anyway.” I look away from Wes, at the bookshelves blurring through my tears.
“Lia,” Wes protests quietly, gripping my hand tighter, but it feels like he’s touching me from eons away.
“After the heart attack, the doctor said my dad needed to slow down, reduce stress if he wanted to avoid an early grave. I did my best to move on and forget about you. I became a corporate lawyer, and when I was earning a good salary, I started helping financially so my dad could retire. But it was too late. He had a massive heart attack when I was an associate on my first major acquisition. No matter what I did, I couldn’t take back all the mistakes I’d made. I grieved us, Wes. But we went down a path without understanding the ramifications. And I had to live with those consequences.”
My words hang in the air, silent tears drip down my cheeks, but instead of feeling a heavy grief, laying it all out is cathartic.
Wes drops my hand, dragging his own over his face. “It’s a lot. I need a moment.” I wait as he looks blankly in front of me, his breathing jagged. I’ve had years to work through everything and I’m still haunted by the loss of us and why.
“Andrea and I were never like that,” he says, finally breaking the silence. “I want you to know that, at least.”
It’s irrelevant now, I want to tell him, but he’s asking me for absolution. He wants me to understand that, despite everything, he would never betray me like that. That he isn’t the type of man to make the same mistakes as his father.
“I know that,” I say. “I would have realized then if not for everything else.”
My words aren’t enough to protect him from his own judgment. He curls up, elbows digging into his thighs. “If I could go back in time, I would have paid attention to what you needed instead of obsessing over what I was feeling. I’m worse than my father.”
“Don’t say that.” I place a comforting hand over the curve of his back, feeling the shift of his breath. “You were a kid. Your father abandoned his family. You were dealing with things you shouldn’t have been.”
“Still. I made mistakes. Instead of going out and getting drunk that night of the party, I should have come to talk to you. I stayed the night at Andrea’s because I was too incoherent to take care of myself. It was a stupid way to deal with heartbreak.” His tremors vibrate through me. “And that morning, I was so hungover. I drove right by the police cars and the sirens on my way home. I had no idea it was you in the wreck. All I knew was that your cottage was dark and the cars were gone, and I thought you guys had left for home early. I texted and called, but no one ever answered. When I got ahold of Mel a couple of days later, she said you didn’t want to talk to me. She was so angry she hung up before I got a word in.”
“I told her about Andrea,” I say faintly, and he slumps down deeper.
“And you never came back during the summer. Every time I was up to visit, I still hoped. But it was mostly strangers we didn’t recognize, sometimes your parents, and once your sister.”
I press deep into his shoulder blades to remind him I’m there next to him when I say, “I wasn’t prepared for what happened, Wes. I was eighteen, and I had an abortion alone. I told no one, except my therapist years later. She didn’t understand half of the family dynamics I was navigating, anyway. The only way for me to move forward was to pretend it hadn’t happened. I was too scared to come back, to see you and to relive it. Maybe it would have been better, maybe seeing each other would have helped me move through it sooner. But I’m here now.”
“Would you have chosen differently if I’d been there?” He straightens, looking at me with hooded, haunted eyes.
I shake my head quickly. “No. I have many regrets, but that isn’t one of them. Even if nothing had happened between us, I would have made the same decision.”
His sigh is a full-body motion, up and down until he’s hunched again. “Is there ever going to be a world where I can somehow convince you I’m sorry for all of it?”
“I know you are.” I let my hand drop from his back. “What were those years like for you?”
He tells me then about the years away at school. The tumultuous relationship with his father. The difficulties he had moving on, his subsequent attempts at romantic entanglement feeling half-hearted and empty. “You were the only one I wanted. Growing up, when I saw the future, it was always you next to me,” he says. “Maybe we were too young for that kind of commitment, but a part of me could never let that go.”
Wes’s eyes burn bright, scorching deep into me, burning away my doubt.
“I felt that way too,” I say.
We’re quiet until I yawn. It feels like I’ve been running a marathon, and now it’s over and I am so, so tired.
Wes stands, and for a moment I worry we’re done here, now that I’ve told him everything, but he returns with a throw blanket.
“Come here,” he murmurs, spreading the blanket over both of us. “You need to sleep.”
I nestle into the crook of his arm, my chin against his chest. At first he’s tense, the ramifications of everything we said coursing through him. But as my breathing evens out, he softens and we both fall asleep.
When I rise, Wes is staring up at the ceiling, head resting on his folded arm.
“Did you sleep?” I murmur. Hazy golden sunlight drifts through the crack of the basement window. It feels like the sun is embracing us.
“A little. It’s felt like I’ve been looking at a puzzle upside down all these years, and I’m only now figuring that out.”
I’m careful, assessing his expression. He’s comfortable against me, even if his eyebrows are buried in thought. I encircle my arm across his stomach, pulling him closer to me. His voice rasps when he speaks again. “You disappearing on me, how I never saw you again. It was the hardest thing I ever dealt with. I thought it was because you felt I wasn’t good enough for you. I was so angry and devastated for so long.”
Burying my face into him, I say, “I’m sorry I did that to you.”
“I’m sorry too,” he says, kissing my hair. “Do you think we can try again? To be together in whatever way we can?”
“Yes,” I say, resting my hand over his heart, feeling the beats match mine. “I want that. I want to be together again, but without limits and boundaries. Us on the lake, and in the city and across the world.”
“We can forge a new path,” Wes says, his fingers light over my forearm, tracing indecipherable letters of love and promise. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all of this, it’s that there’s more than one right way to get through life.”
I reply, “I think we can figure it out together.”
We stay there as morning grows and the sun fully wakes up. When I look up at Wes, he’s studying me, a crooked smile on his face, and I can’t help but press my own lips against his. It’s slow, and simultaneously chaste but heated. A promise of what we can be once again.
“What should we do now?” Wes rasps.
“I want to say more of this,” I say, my fingers grazing his cheek. It would be so easy to get lost here, let the time pass by as if I don’t have a care in the world. Except I do, a reminder to bring myself back into the now. “But Ciji. I need to check on her.”
We go back to my house together, even though I tell Wes to stay, to catch up on sleep. I leave him downstairs and go up to Ciji’s room. She answers my knock with a groan.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
Ciji pulls herself up against the headboard, popping the Tylenol and draining her water glass. “Alive,” she deadpans, grabbing for her phone.
She looks surprisingly well. Her lips are rosy, her skin has colour and she’s scrolling through her phone with a vigour that I lost a decade ago. I raise my eyebrows. “You look better than I do, and I wasn’t drinking.”
“Looks are deceiving. My life is over.” She flops back into the bed. “Apparently, after I left, Everett tried to hook up with Helen. She said she turned him down, but can you believe it? He’s so gross.”
She directs her outrage at Everett, the worst boy ever, and she beckons to me welcomingly. I pull up a chair from her desk. Instead of weighing my words carefully, like I don’t know how to talk to her, I let myself relax. “Grosser than your vomit last night. I couldn’t tell if you had pizza or a really raw burger for dinner.”
“A pizza.” Ciji turns tomato red. “I’m sorry. About everything. My mom called yesterday after her doctor’s appointment. I know she’s not telling me everything, and I was freaking out and just wanted to feel nothing. But I shouldn’t have done that.”
“No,” I agree. “You shouldn’t have lied about where you were going.” The reprimand lingers in the air, so I continue. “But I am glad you called me for help. We all make mistakes, and I am here for you, no matter what. None of this makes me love you less. I don’t want you to go through these things alone.”
She melts into her bed, eyes shiny.
“Ciji,” I murmur. “I know things are hard right now. We can talk to your mom more about what the next steps are for her treatment. Regardless, she’s going to need to recover from surgery and you only have a couple weeks of math left. If you want to go to Toronto, if you want to withdraw from math, tell me. I’ll make sure you get there. It’s your decision and I trust you, but you need to be honest with me and tell me what you need.”
“Thank you, Lia,” she says, and I can tell she means it. She scrunches her nose. “I’ll finish math,” she says shyly. “You’ll help me catch up too?”
“Yes, I’ll help you and so will Wes,” I say. “But also, you need to take this seriously. This is your decision now and there’ll be no more parties or late nights out. You need to respect my time, the way I’m respecting you.”
“Are you going to tell Mom?” Ciji asks, sitting back up.
I give her a look. “I’m going to let you decide what you want to tell her. But if the rules aren’t being followed, then you lose that privilege and I’ll speak to your mother.”
“Thank you,” she says quietly, studying her bitten nails. My heart aches; she reminds me so much of Mel but also of myself.
“And Ciji?” I continue. “I want you to be able to come to me if you need help. When I was younger, I wish I had felt safe leaning on others, letting them know when I was struggling. I know I’m not perfect, but I’m here to talk if you ever need it.” As a child, I wish I’d had a safe person to confide in, someone older than me who could help me muddle through the challenges of growing up in a non-judgmental way.
“Okay,” Ciji says quietly. She then looks up at me, vulnerable. “Do you think Mom knows that I want to be there for her too? That I love her?”
I squeeze her knee. “Your mom knows you love her. She’ll never doubt that.”
“Then why isn’t she telling me what’s going on?” Ciji says, fiddling with her duvet.
“Sometimes it takes one person being brave and vulnerable to help the other person open up,” I tell her, wondering if being more open with my parents, and with Wes a decade ago, could have changed our paths. “But in the end, it’s a two-way street. You can’t force her to share, but telling her how you feel will help her understand what you need from her.”
“Yeah,” she says. “Maybe you’re right. I’ll call and tell her.”
“That’s a great idea,” I tell Ciji. “But first, maybe we should have some pancakes?”
After we’ve all eaten breakfast, I pull out my phone. Unsurprisingly, there’s a message from Eleanor.
Lia,
Thank you for your summary. I would have preferred to have received the document earlier, but your work was satisfactory. Given your performance, I would like to have you on another upcoming matter. Two big banks, a great opportunity. I presume you’re interested. I’ll be in touch Monday.
Eleanor
I reread the lines Two big banks, a great opportunity . A month ago, I would have been thrilled at the prospect of being on more big projects, of earning my place at the firm. But I can’t seem to get excited now.
Meanwhile, Ciji and Wes set up at the table to work through the Pythagorean theorem. I made it clear to her that she could take some time away from math if she needed to gather her strength for her chat with Shehla Auntie later today. Instead of taking the out, she looked at me, fierce determination blazing, and told me that she wanted to try. Now their heads are bent over loose-leaf papers, Ciji untangling the questions in front of her.
The two of them make me proud. Ciji, taking the opportunity to turn the tide, and Wes, who already took a chance on leaving a gilded cage in search of fulfillment. I want to be brave like them.
Only I have the power to change my course. I grab my phone.
Hi Eleanor,
Thank you for your kind words, they are deeply appreciated. However, on reflection, I will be taking the vacation days I had approved with HR. Looking forward to chatting when I am back.
Take care,
Lia
I do my best to ignore the tingle of guilt in me. Eleanor and I are both complicit in my overtime work, but now I know that I want to get off this train and board another one.
As an offering, I send Hassan and Norah a message giving them the heads-up that Eleanor has a new big bank merger coming up.
Hassan: Thanks friend!
Norah: Thanks! Good on you for putting yourself first
I put my screen down and peer out the window. It’s drizzling, but instead of the rain being oppressive, it feels like the sky is telling me to enjoy this morning in the home that I love. When I smile at the sight of Ciji studying her math textbook, Wes looks up at me, meeting my grin.
I grab a pastel-covered book and the morning drifts quietly by, in the company of two people who don’t wish they were anywhere else, even if just for now.
Ciji comes down from her room in the mid-afternoon, after a heart-to-heart with her mother.
“How was it?” I ask, pulling myself up from Wes’s shoulder on the couch where I’ve been half dozing, half worrying about how the discussion would go.
“It was okay,” she says. “Hard.” Her eyes glint. “Mom needs chemo.”
“I’m sorry, Ciji,” Wes says gravely.
I reach for her and she lets me take her hand. “How can I help? Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” She twists a lock of hair between her fingers. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I need.”
The glint of the sun on the bay catches my eye from the window. The rain has cleared. “We need to go outside. We need to be on the lake.”
She doesn’t refuse. The three of us go out, Ciji and I on the pedal boat and Wes on the kayak. The bay mirrors the sky’s blue and clouds drift in and out, screening us from the direct sun. At first we’re silent, and then, when Ciji asks us how we spent so many summers on this very boat, the stories flow.
The tales of the amoeba water, the pedal boat with Wes and my sister, the time spent together dreaming of the future. Almost in agreement, Wes and I drift by Secret Island, pointing out the knoll, describing the happiness we felt every moment of our time together there.
“It looks small,” Ciji says, wrinkling her nose as we turn back towards the cottage. From far away, it does look small. A speck of land in the deep blue.
“It was the most important place to me,” I tell her, meeting Wes’s gaze. He’s smiling at me, fond and wistful as he leans back against the seat of the kayak.
“The most important place for me was with you,” he says, his words a sunbeam warming my heart.
“Ew,” Ciji says. But her expression is lighter as she looks between us. “Wes and Lia, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”
“Shut up,” I tell her, but gesture Wes to paddle over so I could place a kiss on his cheek. It’s a small thing, but big for Wes and me. A public declaration of the affection between us. It was all he wanted from me, so many years ago.
Later that evening, Wes whispers in my ear. “I told them yes,” he says, eyes glittering. “I’m going to take the job in Toronto.”
“I’m happy for you,” I say, heart burgeoning with hope. It’s a second chance for him to be himself in the city. And a second chance for us.
That night, we sleep next to each other again. At first, restrained, snug under the covers, hand in hand. But when I wake up in the early hours of the morning, I reach for Wes. The languid grips and touches shift into soft whispers, then muffled laughter and hot fingers gripping into the backs of my thighs until I’m weak and shivering all over.
When he asks me if I want to or if it’s too soon, I reach for him, nodding reverently that yes, I want him and yes, I want us. But this time, I let myself be open to him instead of hiding my fear inside. I tell him that I’m scared, that maybe I’ll take longer, that maybe it won’t be good.
He runs his fingertips down my face, pressing a hot kiss to my neck, and tells me we can stop, it’s enough, we can take it slow. But I’m ready now.
And even though he knows that everything is safe, he procures a condom, and somehow I’m melting into the trust and begging him. I completely relax, letting my world shift around him once again.
Later that morning, I wake to his arm thrown around my waist, his hand over the tattoo on my hip and his other hand on my ribs, our breaths rising and falling in sync with the waves of the bay.