47-Kit #2
I’ve been all over America a few times over, but this quaint countryside is the first place that reminds me of back home.
A breeze moves through, cool enough to raise goosebumps along my arms. Zach tucks her hands into her sleeves. Shoulders tight, she stands like she’s trying to breathe through mud. I come beside her, hands in my pockets, wishing I could take even a fraction of that weight off her shoulders.
All of this beauty flourished right outside her door while she suffered behind it. The unfairness of it burns through me like acid.
She glances up at me, jerking her chin toward the willow. I follow her trudging steps. Her shoulders shake with each sniffle, her back rising and falling with stifled sobs as she kneels at the trunk’s base.
“My dog Luna’s buried here.” Zach lifts the bone-shaped headstone, wiping the moulded clay with her sleeve before setting it back into its place. “This was my favourite thing about this house. I think a part of Nicole’s here, too.”
She grips the necklace, twirling it aimlessly. “I left most of me here with them. It’s like I lost every part of my past self. Like I’m living two lives in the same lifetime, the then and the now.”
The willow’s trunk is carved with initials, symbols, and dates. Loads of hearts, some more faded than others. Zach’s fingers trace the chipped bark above my hand, her nail beds red and swollen from recent biting.
N+Z 4-EVA – 5/12/05
“When I couldn’t leave the house, but my dad didn’t want to see me, Nicole would sit here with me. She used to joke that once our kids were grown, we’d leave our husbands and retire here as old ladies. Tear that stupid house down and build a cottage.”
“What sort of cottage?”
She smiles, two fresh tears catching on the corners.
“Nothing fancy. Something small and quaint. With giant, mismatched brick and viridian shutters. A skinny wraparound porch, screened in, of course. We’d put a flower garden out front and grow our veggies out back.
Get a dock for fishing. Inside, a chimney fireplace big enough to heat the place in winter. ”
Zach stands straight and wipes her cheeks, folding her hands behind her head as she stares out at the lake. “But I don’t know; I think it might be time to take his advice and let go.”
She says his with so much hatred, like Endymion’s a stain she can’t scrub out. A shadow that turns up from the corners of her life no matter how many lights she switches on. Awe curdled into resentment. I see her, waking up with that same cold weight in her chest, a sense of being watched.
Does he appear to her the way he does to me; a tall, terrible beauty that shrinks me to a speck?
I study the rigidity in her jaw, her empty stare—hard glass formed from an inferno of fury. She’s been deeply wronged, repeatedly, by something she can’t fight or outrun.
Life.
Dread twists its way around my spine. He’s infected her in the ways he’s diseased me. We carry the same ghostly curse, a story written in our own bloody ink.
“I blamed him for all of it,” she says, her gaze following the horse in the distance as if she’s pondering swimming across the lake, hopping on its back, and riding as far from life as it’ll take her.
“But then I realised how much power I was giving him. He had no control over that accident, only the guy that was drinking had the power to make a better decision. Gods, or whatever they are, have no control. If they did, why would they sit back and let these horrible things happen in the world?”
She pokes her chest. “I mean, did I do it? Was this some sick price I had to pay to get all this?” Sweeping her arm across the landscape, a deranged, manic laughter peels from her as she points at me. “Why did I have to lose her to get to you? This tour. My career.”
The question hangs helplessly, slicing distance between us like a swipe of a sword.
I know what she means about her dreams coming true, and their impossible alignment with mine. But for a heartbeat, a stupid, selfish heartbeat, I thought she meant me. That losing her best friend somehow led her to us. For a moment, I forget how to breathe.
Wanting her is like holding paper too close to a flame—one wrong move, and everything burns.
Zach’s shoulders curved inward like she’s trying to protect the last unbroken piece of her heart. The boundary she keeps between us grows, and I get it.
I’m not sure she wants anything from me beyond what we already are.
And I can’t risk pushing her, tipping us into something we can’t climb back out of.
Because if we step over that invisible edge there’s no sweeping it up.
It’d be like dropping a glass sculpture from a rooftop.
Once it shatters, the pieces can never be put back together the same.
And I’m already cracked enough for the both of us.
“I was in a band before Somnium,” I say, and she freezes her next words, her lips parted.
She knows a bit of the story, but she hasn’t heard the part I’ve buried the deepest.
“I grew up with Melody, and when my father lost everything, she was the only one who stayed in my life. We worked well together as musicians, and somewhere along the way, we became more. Not that we were good partners, but still, I think I would’ve spent my life with her.”
I swallow hard, knowing what I say next will irrevocably change the way Zach sees me.
“But one night, I had a pint too many, and after a gig I lost control of the car. She didn’t survive.
It tears a bit of me away every day. I’m so fucking ashamed,” I whisper as Zach’s breath hitches, the sound like a firearm delivering a fatal blow.
“It’s my fault, and no punishment will ever erase it.
Then, to receive all this adoration and success—it’s a cruel cosmic joke.
If I’d known the price, I would never have paid it. ”
Her gaze cuts to the grass, whose browned blades are as withered as I am.
Full lashes trembling, her eyes flood with tears that catch the late-morning sun.
She bites her lip hard enough to leave a mark.
In that instinctive reach she does when she’s overwhelmed, her hand lifts toward her necklace, but halfway there she stops, fingers curling into a fist.
It guts me. The wind stings my eyes, or maybe that’s just the shame.
Zachary sees me for what I am; reckless, selfish, and catastrophic. Anticipation clamps to the back of my neck, bracing for a blow I’ve earned a hundred times over.
She’s going to walk away. Leave me in this empty house with my own ruin.
“You need to forgive yourself.” Her voice wavers, like she’s trying to convince herself too.
Somehow, it’s worse.
I stumble back a half step like my lung’s been punched out. Some part of her must care for me, even if she doesn’t want to. No one says that to a man who’s just confessed the worst mistake of his life unless they see something in him worth salvaging. It rattles me, shaking my soul loose.
“Have you forgiven the man who did this?” I point to the tree engraved by her friend, already knowing the answer. But I need it to come from her lips. “Have you forgiven yourself for making Nicole pick you up?”
I toss my head toward the tree because I need to understand how she can offer me a mercy she’s never given herself. She clenches her fists.
“See, it’s not so simple,” I say, the words scraping out of me in a harsh rasp.
I need her to understand how much she should despise me. It ought to be easy to look at what I’ve done and walk away. Something claws at the inside of my ribs. A part of me wants her to finally see the monster that lives beneath this skin.
“Zach?” a gravelly voice calls from the driveway. I jolt, the moment shattering like crystal. “Oh, my Zach!”
An older man with a face full of grey hair appears at the edge of the drive, waving frantically.
Zach gasps, the intake full of joy and grief as she runs to him.
Despite his smaller stature, he lifts her effortlessly, spinning her once before setting her down.
He looks her over, cupping her face and kissing both cheeks.
Zach collapses into him, gripping his quilted parka as she sobs.
Beyond the reunion, Yensil leans against his hood, pretending to check his phone to give Zach this moment.
He’s a silent anchor, and right now I’m grateful for it.
I’m like a stranger stepping into a film I haven’t watched from the beginning, trying to make sense of a story that started long before I ever showed up.
I’m walking into the climax, but still, I don’t want to leave the theatre.
I don’t want to run this time. I want to understand her whole bloody plot, study every torn piece to figure out how to stitch her back together.
When it gets too heavy, selfishly, I want to be her provider, the one she reaches to for comfort.