Chapter 30 Sydney #2
Knowing Bronwyn, she’d hold up a sign when I crossed the stage and scream her head off. When I found her afterward, she’d jump all over me with all her short-person jackrabbit energy.
It shouldn’t have been a big deal. But the closer it got, the bigger it felt.
It was okay to let someone make a fuss over me this one day—not because of what I’d done for the team or for someone else—but because someone cared about me.
It was okay to feel like I mattered all on my own, at least to Bronwyn.
I could have asked a couple younger teammates to come, and they would have. But having to ask changed everything. Bronwyn wanted to be there, not out of pity or duty, but with excitement.
She made signs and kept them in her room. One was huge and meant to drape over our porch railing. The other was small and covered in hot pink and black sequins. The signs were silly, and I loved them.
Why can I remember the week leading up to graduation but not that day? Was it because I met Gabriel that weekend? Did he crash at our place? Did I hook up with him, and only realize he had a drinking problem afterward?
No. That doesn’t make sense. When he got the tattoos on his arms, we definitely hadn’t had sex, yet.
I ease to the edge of the bed and open my bedside drawer. My phone sits charging inside. Unplugging it, I carry it to the chair in the corner and curl up, ready to scroll. It’s a long shot. Looking at photos probably won’t help. I doubt graduation had anything to do with Gabriel.
Still.
Still.
It would have been eight years ago.
I don’t have the same phone I had in college, but my photos were all backed up to the cloud along the way. Photos. Years. Scroll back. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight years.
Where is the month of May?
I stop scrolling when I reach it, open the entire month, and flip through the photos one at a time.
I stop on a selfie of me standing in front of our white porch railing in my cap and gown. And I remember what I wish I could forget all over again.
Clarissa had emergency surgery the week before graduation. We were all worried sick about her, but she was recovering. When her husband, James, took her back home to New York, Bronwyn followed to bring her flowers and check on her.
Bronwyn had plenty of time to make it back to Blackwater for my commencement. She had the schedule worked out.
The morning of the ceremony, I received a text.
Bronwyn: I am SO sorry! My brother “forgot” that he promised to fly me back. Gabriel woke up still wasted off his ass from last night. I want to MURDER him. I have to make other arrangements to get there
I stared at that text for a long time.
Me: Don’t . . .
My vision grew too blurry to type. I wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand and tried again.
Me: . . . worry about it. It’s not a big deal
Bronwyn: Yes it is. Put up the sign on the porch for me, okay? I might be a little late, but I’ll get there as fast as I can. I’m on my way
She’d only make it if she could find another flight from their private airport soon or if she got really lucky driving and didn’t hit rush-hour traffic or any construction zones on Interstate 80.
Me: I should probably skip it
Bronwyn: Please don’t. I’m coming. I’ll scream the loudest when they call your name
When it was time, I draped the banner on the porch railing. I took a selfie in front of it and made myself smile. I took the bus to campus in my cap and gown. I listened for Bronwyn and searched for a sparkly sign in the crowd.
When they called my name, I walked across the stage. I shook hands with the dean. Accepted my diploma to cheers and hoots from my teammates and fellow classmates who were also graduating.
Then it was over.
I walked past the other graduates as they hugged their parents and siblings. Then I kept walking, all the way back to the house where I lived on borrowed time.
When I got there, I checked my phone. A text from Bronwyn said an accident on the interstate had traffic in a standstill. She’d never been more sorry for anything in her life. When she made it back, we’d have cake.
I didn’t want cake.
I’d make myself take a couple bites with her, though, so she didn’t feel bad. Attitude of gratitude.
I took off and folded my cap and gown, then put them in a plastic grocery bag to donate to the Salvation Army.
And I hoped Gabriel McRae choked on his own vomit.
I place my phone on the table next to me and sit in the darkness with my knees drawn up to my chest and half sob, half laugh.
“Sydney?” Gabriel sits up in bed and clicks his lamp on. “What’s wrong?”
“Do you remember the day I graduated from college?”
He shakes his head slowly, his hair tousled and sexy, his face so tragically beautiful it hurts. “I learned what happened, eventually, but I don’t remember it. I was on a bender that week.”
“You say ‘what happened’ like it was an accident, instead of a choice.”
“I hurt you with my own callous irresponsibility. I chose drinking over a promise I’d made, and I’m so fucking sorry. I don’t have the words for how sorry I am. I didn’t know you, then. I didn’t know what a big deal it was.”
“Would it have mattered if you had? What would you have done differently?”
“If I’d known, then, I wouldn’t have offered to fly my sister in the first place, or I’d have called her and cancelled sooner. She’d have planned for her own ride earlier, not trusted me to get her there.”
Sorry . . . Shoulda . . . let you . . . drive.
I rest my forehead on my knees. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.”
It’s been eight years since he broke my heart and didn’t even know he’d done it. For me, it was five minutes ago. I’m willing to bet it always felt like five minutes ago.
I’d have been fine if I hadn’t let myself care in the first place. If I hadn’t allowed myself to be convinced that it was okay to care.
Gabriel sniffs once as though he’s getting a cold. “Right.”
He throws the comforter back and goes into the closet, then returns within seconds, clothing in hand, and heads for the door.
“Where are you going?”
He stops walking but doesn’t turn around to look at me. “I’m giving you space.”
For the first time in my memory, he doesn’t tell me what he’s doing or invite me to join him. He walks out the door without another word.
I wait, sitting in the chair. He’ll come back soon. But fifteen minutes pass, and he doesn’t return. I can’t blame him. I’ve been yanking him close with one hand and slapping him away with the other.
An hour passes, time creeping one slow minute at a time. I move from the chair to the patio outside our room to let the balmy ocean breeze wash over me.
I have to find him and apologize. I don’t hate him. I don’t know who those words were for, but they were never for my Gabriel.
Maybe they were for the addiction itself.
Maybe they were for my father who loved me but never more than he loved his next drink.
Or for the woman who couldn’t tell her husband she was proud of him after years of him staying clean and sober because she’d convinced herself distrust was wisdom, not fear and resentment.
A car door closes on the driveway, and I crane my neck to try to see around the blooming hibiscus bush. An engine purrs to life, then Gabriel’s SUV, washed-out gray and black, taillights glowing red in the overhead security lights, winds down the drive to our front gate.
He didn’t leave our house this late at night. He wouldn’t. It had to be someone else. Maybe it was a shift change for the security team.
I leave the bedroom, walking at a normal pace, refusing to panic. When I find him, probably in our little library, I’ll ask him to forgive me, and he will because he’s my Gabriel. I won’t let fear control me. If I can’t make my mouth say the words I love you, then I’ll write them down.
I walk through every room twice. When I step into the kitchen for the second time, I stop lying to myself. He isn’t here. Where could he go at—I glance at the clock on the microwave—12:14? A bar? A nightclub? To pick up a woman? He wouldn’t call Rege.
My legs twitch with the irrational urge to track him down, stomp into whatever bar he’s gone to, and scream at him to get his ass home.
But I’ve lived that before. Becky yelling. Me begging. It doesn’t work and makes the person following feel crazy. I told him I wouldn’t stay if he drank. I can’t.
He has a bodyguard to make sure he doesn’t end up in a ditch or a fight or a coma.
He said he’d never give up on me. But that was before, when he thought he’d find his wife. The woman he knew is gone. There’s only me, and I’m the next thing to a feral animal. He kept reaching out to pet me, hoping I’d become tame. But I bit the hand that fed me one too many times.
Unable to get back into bed, I pick up my phone.
The location tracker app I’ve never had to use, because I always, always knew where my husband was and when he planned to be home, stares back at me.
There are good reasons for some people to have apps like these.
Bronwyn says their whole family uses bracelets with trackers for safety.
Someone could try to take one of them for ransom or revenge because of who their dad is.
If I hadn’t broken the chain on my necklace and left it at work, Gabriel and the team would’ve been able to track me down when I disappeared. My ordeal would have been over sooner.
But the old me didn’t have this app on my phone because I wanted to see what time I should have dinner on the table for Gabriel. And I wasn’t afraid he was kidnapped or in an accident, or not only afraid of that.
I could call him and hope he picks up, or I could click on this icon and follow him to catch him in the act. But don’t I know better than most how pointless that is?
Everybody chooses a path. Some of Dad’s old girlfriends drank with him and pretended they were having fun until they couldn’t pretend any more. Becky didn’t. She coaxed him, then fought with him, then left him because he was never going to change.
It would’ve been better for Gabriel if I’d died. He’d have grieved, but then he’d have moved on. He wouldn’t have set himself on fire over and over to keep me warm.
He called me a goddess and himself just a man trying to deserve me.
I didn’t deserve him. I should’ve forgiven him years ago, not because he apologized, but because he did the work to be better.
I’ve been through withdrawal. It was nothing compared to what he’d have faced.
Alcohol is harder, the withdrawal longer and more dangerous.
I didn’t want the drugs they gave me, and it was still hell.
Then Gabriel had to face the part of himself that thought he needed to go numb to cope with the memories of childhood trauma so horrific it makes mine look like a scraped knee next to it.
Gabriel made it through all of that. He fought for me through years of a relationship with a woman who didn’t believe in him. He held on through my captivity.
Only for me to wake him in the middle of the night and tell him I still hated him. That none of it meant anything. I kicked him out of his warm, safe bed and back into a life that will kill him.
Dad was sweet as pie when he was drinking and mean as hell when he wasn’t. When he was sober, he was a dry drunk, never healed but superficially scabbed over.
Gabriel didn’t have scabs. He had scars. And I tore through them in minutes.
The terrible truth, no matter what Henry says, is that I’m not good for Gabriel. I never have been.
I move to the desk in the corner and search through the drawer for a paper and pen. When I find them, I begin: Dear Gabriel . . .