All We Left Behind (28 page)

“Maybe.” I look up, trying to salvage us. “Maybe I'm not scared anymore.”

His eyes go dark. Desire dark. And there's no more sun.

“Marion.” He moves fast, stepping so close to me that I can smell the soap on his skin. His closeness is disarming and the edge of his mouth brushes the hair on my cheek as he moves it to my ear. “There's a point when you're going to have to decide what you want,” he says, lingering there too long, and my whole body clenches. “And when you decide what you want, you're going to have to ask for it.”

He steps away from me and the mix of cold and heat between us leaves me tingling. His silver eyes sparkle and I feel paralyzed and more confused than ever.

“Enjoy your
thing
,” he says, walking away without another word, and I don't know what to do with the heat he's left rippling through me. He gets into his pickup and
drives away, and I jam my wrists against the silver door handles of my car. I let my hair whip around my face in the swell of the breeze, and I'm glad Abe's gone because I don't know what to do with him. With this craving. I close my eyes and breathe in the air that smells snowy and fresh like white linen and pearl buttons and—

A soft palm squeezes mine.

I want to melt into him. I don't care who this heat is for, I just want to burn.

“Your car or mine?” Kurt asks, but all I want is his mouth.

“Mine,” I say, handing him my keys.

Once we're in my car I crawl over and kiss him long and hot. His hands slide around my waist and up my shirt, and our mouths fog the windows.

“Where?” he asks, breathless.

“Anywhere,” I say, kissing him again, and he turns the ignition.

I take Marion to my
house. It's a bad idea. Josie will be home. Dad will be home. Not to mention Josie looks the way she does. But I'm tired of the car.

Dad's truck is gone when we arrive, which seems too lucky, but I'll take it.

I try not to notice the look on Marion's face when she takes in my concrete house. My overgrown yard. The chain link between our lot and the next. This is exactly why I don't take anyone to my house. But her hand slides into mine and she nuzzles herself against me and all I want is the bed.

“My sister,” I say. “She's gonna be home.”

“Josie?” she asks, and I'm surprised she knows her name.

“Do you remember her? She graduated when we were sophomores.”

Marion shrugs, like she doesn't want to admit she's paid any attention to my life. It makes me kiss her until it's hard to breathe.

I get out and walk her to the front door.

“Look, Josie's been gone awhile,” I say, trying to prepare her as I get out my keys. “She looks . . . different.” I hesitate with the key in the lock. “I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell anyone about her or . . .”

Marion kisses me so lightly my whole body throbs.

Inside, the house is a mess. It looks normal to me, but to Marion . . . I've been in her house, and it doesn't look like this. Dirty bowls on the coffee table. Ratty old couch. That cigarette smell imbedded three inches thick.

I don't see Josie anywhere.

I consider opening a window, but I lead Marion to my room instead. Down the hall it's dark, daylight glowing faintly behind three small curtains, and Josie's door is closed.

“I think she's sleeping,” I whisper to Marion, nodding to my sister's door.

Everything's quiet.

Too quiet.

I wonder if I should go check on her. Or look to see if Dad's left a note. But Marion kisses my cheek and her salty smell makes me forget them.

My room doesn't have a lock. I jam a chair under the knob, which takes a couple tries, and Marion pretends to be interested in the trophies over my desk.

“Those are from soccer,” I say, messing with the chair. “But a few are from middle school, and track.”

Tiny flecks of gold reflect from the trophies onto the
wall. They catch the light from the window over my bed. The sheets are rumpled. Half on. Half off. Left that way from this morning, because I didn't expect to have—

“Sorry about the mess.” I pick up a stray shirt and chuck it into the hamper and straighten the sheets. “Just give me a—”

“It's fine,” Marion interrupts, her voice right behind me. Hand on my back. I turn and her mouth presses into mine. I wrap my arms around her and our bodies find the bed. Sheets tangle with the smell of her. Of us. Of clothes being removed, and sweat, and me in—

Her body arcs and this is
not
like in the car. It's not closed windows and feet against door handles and bunched-up jeans half-off and wedged. There's room for both of us in this bed and I'm overwhelmed by the space of it. There's space for elbows and arms. There's space for legs and limbs. And I want all of it. I want every inch.

I tremble and want this
moment.

I want it to hold me. To burn me. To sear me with his breath, and his words, and his him.

I want to hang on to his touch and his scent and the brush of crisp-soft sheets against my toes and shins.

I want this to keep. I
don't
want this to dissolve, like it did the first time, into rose hips, and creek water, and unspeakable skin.

But he's tender. Too tender. And everything frail and soft and vulnerable—

Turns into mud.

The sheets stick to the
sweat of my legs and Marion rolls off me.

She turns, clutching her hair, and leaves me to look at the white of her back. Her shoulder blades arch and her body trembles. I've seen her like this before. That first time in my car.

The sheets tangle over us, but we don't touch. I put a hand on her shoulder. But she shakes it off.

“Please don't,” she whispers.

My hand hovers over her. Useless. I ball it up into a fist and stare at the ceiling. Stare at the gold flecks from my trophies that are spit over the walls, a hundred tiny pieces broken in the light.

I hate what I'm hearing. Marion's crying sounds like when I could hear Josie through the wall. But I was too scared to knock on her door, because she was going to tell me to fuck off. And this is just like Mom coming home obliterated and me not asking why. Hoping she knew how
to figure it out herself. Hoping she knew how to hang on.

This sounds exactly like that. Just as far away. Just as close.

And I'm sick of it.

I roll over and pull Marion against me. I wrap her in my arms and refuse to ignore it. I hold her tight and promise not to let go. She tries to shake me, just like Josie did with her fuck-you glare, but I won't let her. I'm not walking away from this.

I'm going to see this.

Hold her through it.

I won't let her find some other way to chase the pain—music, booze, whatever. I'm going to sit here in it.

With her.

It takes a minute for Marion to realize I'm not letting her go. But when she finally does, her shoulders release, relaxing into a new quiet, and then they heave and she sobs.

Sobs with her whole body rocking against me. Sobs about something I don't know, and maybe I can't know, and maybe I will never know.

I want to understand, but maybe I don't
need
to. Maybe all I need is to be here, and that's what fills the void. Maybe all I need is for her to understand that she doesn't have to do this alone.

He holds me so tight
it feels like something new breaks in me. A flood that I didn't know was in there. And I'm tired. Of holding it in. So he holds, and I cry.

I cry for all the things I can't say. For the loss, and the naked parts of me, and the shame. For the tenderness of his touch, that may never do anything but bring the darkness to wake. For being a child.

When Kurt finally releases me, the sheets are a puddle beside my head. He touches my shoulder, my spine, my hip, and then lets me lie here in the sheets. I stay still, breathing, for what seems like an hour, and the shadows grow dim.

Then there's music.

Fragile acoustic music. It comes with the brush of his arm on my back. Soft. Meant to comfort. It comes with his heart, and his secrets, and his him. And I should love this. I
want
to love this.

But I can't.

Love means trust, and trust means letting it rise—the
silence that I don't talk about, the invisible that is only allowed to be shimmering half-truths and not really seen. He's not allowed to make those parts of me become solid in the light. I won't let him. I won't let him coax it out of me. It's too dark and black, and all the oceans and rain can't wash it out. My shame is too messy, and love is supposed to be clean.

“I have to go,” I say, sitting up and collecting my clothes.

Kurt stops strumming, and I have to turn away from his concerned eyes, wanting all of me. The room goes quiet and I slide on my shirt. My jeans. My socks. The sun is almost gone and a tiny bow of orange is all that's left rimming the window.

His hands press into his guitar strings and the tiny vibrations cut out.

“Are you sure?” he asks, as I walk to the door, my whole face puffy from crying. I look back, and for the first time he looks naked—vulnerable—with only his guitar over his lap. His knees press awkwardly together and his toes dig under the sheets.

“You don't have to tell me,” he says, running a hand over his arm, covering his chest. I unhook the chair and move it back to the desk. “Whatever it is,” he insists. “You never have to tell me.”

But that's not how this works. Of course I have to tell him for this to be what he thinks that it is. For us to be what he wants. My hand falls on the doorknob and he's up.

Guitar left behind him on the bed.

“Don't,” he says, putting his hand on the door, and I can't ignore the way my body reacts when he's as close as he is. How my skin knows his skin.

“Kurt . . .” I barely get the word out. All of this caught in my throat. I step away from him, needing distance. Everything too near the surface.

“Stay, please,” he says. “I
don't
have to know.”

I glare at him, anger slicing through me, furious at him for wanting me to pretend. The fact that he knows there's
anything
to tell, is the problem. Nothing real, nothing important can start like this! Not with this secret sitting between us. And the fact that he wants to pretend it isn't there—like Lilith, like my father—infuriates me.

“I have to go!” I say, whipping my hair off my neck.

“You don't.” He presses himself against the door to keep it shut. “You can—”

But his voice drops out and gets raspy, unguarded in a way that scares me more than anything else about him. I can hardly breathe and the room smells like sweat and dust and I wish he had something to cover himself with.

“This . . . ,” he says, his voice trembling. “You, me . . .”

He struggles for the words, fidgeting with his hands, and his eyes flick to the bed, like he wants the sheet to cover his legs. But he looks at it for so long, it scares me to think perhaps I'm the only one he's ever taken to that bed. That everyone else gets the car and the ridge.

“Marion, I . . .”

My chest squeezes and I know what he's going to say before he says it. Only, I don't want to hear it out loud, because it's not true. It can't be true when he doesn't know all of me. Not with the shame and shitty parts that are filled with mud and darkness.

No one can love those parts.

“Marion, I lo—”

“I'm not your mother!” The words splinter out of me. It's a low blow, and it scares me with how harsh it comes out. But I needed something to stop him—anything. I couldn't hear him say it.

I cough, and try to glare at him like I mean it.

“I'm not some girl you're supposed to save,” I say, and everything about him goes rigid, the softness in his eyes turning to ice.

“Fuck you.” His glare hits me hard, and the sun is gone. His words are pained and angry, and I know I've used something he's trusted me with. A secret. But he should never have trusted me with it. He shouldn't have told me about his mother. Sharing those parts only makes him vulnerable, gives other people ammunition. People like me. Only, I know it was shitty and I shouldn't have used it.

But this is what I do when I'm backed into a corner.

Shame crawls through me and I can't bear to face him. I reach for the doorknob, my knuckles brushing his side, and he jets away from me. He stalks to the far end of the room and yanks the sheet off the bed to cover himself.

I stare at his back, knowing I've broken something. I wanted to walk out of this room unscathed, but that isn't the nature of things. Lake water or ocean, if you touch the surface, it will ripple. If you dive under, it will never be the same.