Chapter 48 Kit #2
“She wasn't just your high-school girlfriend, though, right?” Ian said someone broke Bowen's heart during a breakup and that's why he moved here to the cabin. It was always Delaney.
Always.
Bowen doesn't respond. Instead, he opens the shed door and pulls out a little machine with a long hose attachment on it. A power washer?
“What are you doing with that?”
He looks up at me, then back down at the power washer and makes a gesture like, ‘what do you think, dipshit?’
“Are you back together?”
I'm just as surprised by the loud outburst as Bowen is. His head snaps up to look at me, and my eyes blink several times in rapid secession.
“Delaney?” he asks, voice flat. “Delaney?” he says again, slower this time, like he's trying to get me to realize how absurd the question is.
I don't actually want to know.
John used to vacation with Marvin and his wife and their kids, Kit. Man up. You can hear about his relationship.
“Yes. Delaney.”
Bowen scrubs both hands over his face, then shakes his head and grabs the washer. He has to lean over slightly, but he manages to pull it along after him. I watch him go until he's halfway back to the big cabin before my feet start moving again.
“Well, aren't you going to answer me?”
Bowen is filling up the tank on the side where the water spigot is when I catch up. “Wasn't planning on it.”
“Why?”
Bowen sighs, turns off the water, and faces me. “Let's agree not to talk about Marvin, who may or may not have fingered you, and Delaney, okay?” He doesn't wait for me to answer, just starts rolling the power washer to the front of the cabin.
I nearly trip over a rock in my haste to follow.
“Bowen, Marvin was, like, fifty-seven years old.”
“Jesus, Kit.” Bowen finally looks over at me, and he looks disgusted.
“He was married!”
His response to that is taking a cigarette out, lighting it, and glaring at me while he pulled the smoke into his lungs. Then he fiddles with the power washer.
I felt dismissed.
All it takes is a couple nights in a space bigger than a closet, and suddenly, the van no longer looks like a hipster hideaway and more like a rusty tomb.
I've been avoiding looking at it too hard. It’s easier to pretend that the stale air and cluttered nooks and crannies were just part of the charm. Now I'm looking at it through fresh eyes.
Bowen came in here.
He saw the stain on the tan carpeted floor where I dropped a jar of marinara sauce and caught it too late.
He saw the twinkle lights hanging on by Scotch tape and the duct-taped side paneling.
He couldn't have missed my bed that Dad built up off the floor in the back.
Sheets that haven't been washed in too long.
Receipts I kept in a washed-out glass jar for places I liked.
Another glass jar filled with scrawled memories I couldn't forget but didn't want to think about. Dr. Martin once said sometimes you just need to give the thought a minute to breathe, to acknowledge its existence, and then it's easier to let it pass. Sometimes writing them out helped.
There are pictures of our life taped to every wall. Pictures of the life I spent two years mourning in here. I may have been breathing, but I've been living in a coffin.
Bowen came in here and saw all of it. He got inside; he gathered what he deemed important and took it to the cabin.
I'm not sure if it's shame or embarrassment that rips the breath from my lungs.
Or maybe it's the stomach drop and heart lurching into my throat when I see my beaten-up notebook splayed open on the floor next to the bed.
I get an image of Bowen, hunched over on the bed I spent endless nights crying over him, my bleeding heart in words held in his hands.
Bile rises in my throat, and I nail my shin on the edge of the door on my scramble to reach the notebook. I almost looked down to read what words he may have seen. Which entry was it? Was it a letter to his brother? Or a purge of all the thoughts and feelings with nowhere else for them to go?
I don't want to know.
I snap the notebook closed and push it under the bed with shaking hands.
I can't get back out of the van fast enough.
I kick off my shoes and peel off my socks while trying the breathing techniques I learned in rehab. Slow, in through the nose. Out through the mouth.
The grass is warm. The sky is blue. My shirt is soft against my skin. The breeze is cool on my sweaty face. The pressure washer behind me is on.
My heart is loud.
I list through sights, sounds, and feelings until the wave of anxiety pulls away enough for my heart to stop beating in my skull.
I'm okay.
But I'm not. Not really.
Because Bowen is standing on the porch with the pressure washer, and I can see the top third of the door. It's not green anymore.
My toes curl, digging into the earth under me. Like they know exactly what's coming and trying to keep me in place.
It lasts until I have to suck in a breath or risk passing out from lack of oxygen.
It breaks the moment of stillness, and then I'm moving.
The space between me and the cabin seems to narrow and stretch.
The trees and sky and everything tunnels out until it's just Bowen at the end, washing away a memory.
“Come on, Momma Meyer! It's perfect. Like Shrek Swamp green. Who doesn't love Shrek? If you say you don't love Shrek, I'll have to consider who I'm allowing to raise my best friend. It will be a perfect pop of color for our swamp!”
“It looks like pea soup,” my mom laughed, pushing the cart down another aisle. Brett was hugging the paint to his chest, following behind. It was on the clearance shelf for a reason. It was putrid.
“Pea soup is beautiful,” he breathes wistfully, like he was talking about a Michelangelo painting and not something that resembled baby poop.
We were splattered in it three hours later. A heap of laughs in front of the freshly painted door.
“Bowen,” I croak from the bottom of the stairs.
He's cleared nearly half the color already on the top. He doesn't hear me over the noise, and he can't possibly hear the chant of his name in my mind.
“Stop,” I grind out louder.
Bowen glances at me over his shoulder. It must be in my rigid stance, or maybe he can see the ghosts of the past in my eyes because he frowns.
“What's wrong?” he asks, taking his finger off the trigger on the hose.
“The paint…” My nails bite into the skin on my palms. “You're taking off the paint with that.”
He looks at the door, then back to me.
“Yeah. That's the point.”
The point.
I flex my fingers out and wipe them on my pants before pushing my hair back off my forehead. I grip the strands, hating the tingling sensation in my scalp. My skin feels pulled taut all over my body. Like I'm a rubber band ready to snap.
“Brett and I… We… The paint.” It's nothing but a whisper by the end. But Bowen has turned towards me fully.
We look.
We look.
He clears his throat and sets down the nozzle.
His boots are wet—so is the whole porch.
Water is streaming down the steps in rivers coming for my feet.
Bowen looks at me again and moves forward until the toes of his boots are on the very edge of the porch.
One boot moves to hang off the edge but stops.
“You gotta breathe, Kit.”
“I'm trying,” I rasp.
“Try harder,” he says softly. Then he pulls a slow, steady breath through his nose.
Pushes it out through his mouth.
Again.
Again.
The sky is blue. The birds are singing. The grass is warm.
My heart is loud.
“Do you remember my first panic attack?” Bowen wasn’t moving, but somehow, his body becomes more still after my question reaches him. He looks off to the lake and tucks his hands into his pockets. Just when I think he’s going to leave me hanging like he loves to do, his mouth parts.
A shrill ringing cuts the silence before his voice even has a chance to. He pulls his phone from his back pocket and flicks his eyes from the screen to me.
I’m not interested in seeing whether or not he’ll pick whoever is calling or stay in this moment with me.
Me.
I keep my head down, moving up the stairs, and don’t look at the door when I open it to get inside.
“Never mind.” I say with a self-deprecating chuckle.
I don’t wait to see if he’ll respond.
I already know he won’t.