Arms Wide Open: a Novella (6 page)

I tip my head to the side and look at him,
confused. “What do you mean?”

Oliver leans forward again and looks at
me thoughtfully. “How much do you remember about those first few days at the
hospital?”

“Not much,” I admit with a shake of the
head. “I was really out of it because of the OD and all the drugs they put me
on. I remember more once I got on the psych floor.”

“Grant was there for the first few
days,” Oliver tells me. “He called and texted me updates all the time. When you
were starting to come out of it, he said your parents pulled him aside and
asked that he step out of the picture for awhile so you could focus on getting
well. He said things had been rough between you two for awhile and he agreed it
would be best if he didn’t see you. It wrecked him, Laur. He wanted to be there
with you every day, but he figured you’d look for him when you got out of
residential rehab.”

I never did.

I was so angry and hurt that I never
heard a single word from him that I didn’t even bother. Pride is kind of a
vicious creature, and it’s what kept me from looking. I never bothered to ask
where he was or why he never came, maybe because I thought if I meant something
to him, he would put the effort into seeing me. When he didn’t, I adopted a
good riddance attitude even though my heart ached to see him, to find out why,
even though I figured I already knew.

I was horrible to him the last few
months we were together. I know now it’s because I was sick and not thinking
clearly, but how could he know that? I’d gone from best friend and girlfriend
to psycho beast in a short amount of time, and I didn’t think I deserved
another chance. I could think of twenty reasons for him not to want me anymore
but not a single reason why he might.

My brow knots in concentration as I
think back to the vague memories I have of the first few days of my recovery. I
don’t recall much from my drug-induced haze, but I dreamed of him every day. I
dreamed he was holding my hand, stroking my fingers gently while he whispered
that I would get through this and everything would be okay. He whispered plans
of a future, one with both of us. Those hushed promises filled my heart with
hope, and then shattered it when they never happened.

“I dreamed of him...or maybe what I
thought were dreams actually happened. I don’t know.” I look Oliver square in
the eyes and my head starts to throb from the effort of holding in the tears.
“The last thing I dreamed before I went to the psych ward is...him. Us.”

I’m laying in my bed, hospital gown
haphazardly snapped up and the ties loose around my neck. IV tubes shoot from
my arm, snake around the bed, and spill off the edge before arching back up to
connect with the bag of whatever pharmaceutical cocktail they’re pumping into
me. Everything around me is misty and dark, but I can feel someone’s presence.
I sense Axe body wash and coordinating cologne. If I could smile, I would, if
only to let Grant know he’s the world’s least secret agent and I can tell he’s
there. I smell his trademark man-scent from a mile off.

The chair legs scrape against the
linoleum floor with the creak of old wood as the aroma comes closer. Someone
sits down beside me. Suddenly he’s in my narrow field of vision, and all I see
is his dark head of hair as he leans forward to kiss my hand, and tears drop
onto my limp and exposed palm. They’re warm but they chill my hand as they run
off. I’m trying so hard to move, to touch him, to tell him to stop being a dork
and get us a pizza so we can forget this ever happened.

“I’m sorry, Laur. I’m so sorry.”

Quit being a tool and stop crying!

I want to say it, but the words won’t
come. I’m not dead...am I? I can’t get any words out. My voice won’t work. I
can’t say anything and it’s annoying me. In the blur I can make out a fuzzy
square of light that might be a window, but beyond that I see nothing. The rest
is dark, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to see anything, and I’m happy not
to feel anything. The drugs make me not feel the agony that envelopes me
whenever I think of my sister. I can’t breathe without shots of guilty pain
stabbing my lungs. All I want is to tell Grant I’m okay and to stop crying
because that makes me want to cry. And I
hate
crying.

“This is for the best,” he’s saying. I
wish I could stroke his hair, and pull him into my arms. He must’ve read my
mind because the bed creaks and lurches, and he’s suddenly beside me, curled up
next to me as I lie there like a corpse. He drapes his arm carefully over tubes
and wires to stroke my cheek.

What’s for the best?

“You need this time to get better. I
know you—you’ll understand why someday. It’s not like I want to walk away. I’m
not. I’ll never walk away from you, or from us. When you need me, I’m here,
even if you decide I’m the worst mistake you ever made. If you marry someone
else, if you end up in jail, if you need me to hide a body, I’m there. Always.
We have history, and I will always love you. If you come out of this and just
want to be friends, that’s cool. You, me, and Oliver will still be the three
amigos. I...” He sighs heavily. “You need to focus on getting better, work on
becoming whole without being someone’s girlfriend. You need to figure out who
Lauren is and make her better so we can be together again.”

He snorts a little bit, and then
sniffles as he pulls me closer. “That’s what your mom said, anyway, and she’s
probably right. You know I never had one, but she’s pretty cool so I think with
her and your dad by your side, you’ll pull through this. They’re having a rough
time right now, too...first Coral, and now you, so go easy on ‘em. You’re all
they have left. I know how pissy you can get when you want something, but just
let it go and focus on getting healthy again.”

He shifts beside me and I feel his
fingers caressing my face before he leans in and gently kisses my forehead.
“Bye, Laur. Get better and I’ll see you soon.” The indent on the bed lifts as
the warmth and weight next to me vanish, and the comforting smell of him is
gone.

“I remember,” I murmur as a rogue tear
breaks free.

“He was there.”

“Yeah...he was. I remember now,” I
repeat, nodding in agreement.

“So what now?” Oliver asks. He glances
again toward the men’s room but I can’t bring myself to look that way. I’m
afraid if I see Grant, my resolve will break and I’ll go running to him. I’ll
beg forgiveness. I’ll look like an idiot as I apologize and profess my undying
love. He’ll probably get a restraining order. He will thank his lucky stars I
showed my crazy when I did so he could make a clean getaway. Five years have
passed. I can’t erase that time or make right everything I did wrong, even if
that time didn’t come close to erasing how I feel about him.

“What now?” I echo. “Now I go home,
Oliver. I give you my number and we can hang out. You make beautiful music with
your choir students. Grant passes the bar and goes on to be the most amazing
lawyer in the history of lawyers. I look for work and hopefully make a
difference to someone in this awful world.” I grab my purse and stand up. The
bell rang awhile ago, so the place has cleared out, although people still mill
around between tables and talk quietly in shadowed corners. “Life goes on,
Oliver. That’s what happens now.”

I’m back in my place on the couch, with
my denim jacket dangling off its arm. The cute white sundress is now lying in a
crumpled heap on my bedroom floor, and my shoes are scattered between the
kitchen and sofa. I do have on clean yoga pants with baggy tee shirt fresh from
my drawer, something I hope Harlow’s hypersensitive nose will appreciate.

The TV is off. My thoughts are racing as
I stare at the popcorn ceiling, my eyes glazing over and blurring as I think.
The little specks of glitter in the ceiling look like distant stars in my
distorted vision, and I’m trying to focus only on that.

The door opens and slams shut. I hear
the dead bolt slide shut and the chain rattle as Harlow locks up for the night.
I reach for my phone to check the time, and hop up to greet her.

“So, how was your night with the
engineer?” I ask as I walk into the hall. She’s leaning against the door with a
dreamy look on her face and sparkling eyes.

She drops her purse on our little entry
table and puts her hands on her head. “Lauren, I want to giggle and scream like
a little girl. I don’t even know what to think. I...I’m just gone on this guy.”

“Harlow has a boyfriend, Harlow has a
boyfriend,” I chant in an obnoxious, singsong sort of way.

Harlow looks up and just laughs. “I
think I might. It was so nice to be with a guy who wasn’t playing games.”

“And when are you seeing him again?”

She looks at me nervously, like I might
judge her. “Tomorrow?”

“Wow. Good for you!” I say sincerely.
I’m a little surprised she’s moving this fast. She’s always master of the
calculated and thoughtful move, which is why she’s so great at what she does.
She’ll probably own the place in five years. Who am I to judge her on the nerdy
engineer boy? If she finds true love, or thinks it’s something close to that,
she needs to hold on tight and fight to hang onto it. I lost the best thing in
my life because I didn’t believe we were worth fighting for. As the eyeball guy
would say, keep your arms open.

I head back to my daydreaming spot on
the couch and pat the cushion next to mine, inviting her to join me. “I’ve seen
way too many guys use you to get ahead or have a trophy on his arm. You
shouldn’t be paraded around for your looks or used for networking. You deserve
a great guy. I’m glad we went tonight, if only so you could meet Pete.”

Harlow pulls a face. She kicks off her
stilettos and slides across the wooden floor to flop down on the couch. “When I
got the text that said I was dead to you, I thought maybe you weren’t so glad
you went. What happened?”

I laugh. I hop up to grab a half-eaten
pint of Ben and Jerry’s from the freezer along with a couple of spoons, and
then rejoin her by plopping down next to her. She takes a spoon from me as I
pull off the lid, which I toss on the coffee table. We put our feet up and dig
in. “I had a few epiphanies tonight.”

“Really?” Harlow examines the spoon
before loading it up and taking a bite. “How so? What do you mean?”

I stop and take a deep breath. I wish I
could say I knew exactly when a switch flipped on in my head. I spent so much
of my time tonight just trying to work through the emotions staging a steel
cage death match in my head that I never noticed, I guess. I walked home alone
under the orange glow of the street lamps, and my head cleared itself under
stars not visible through city lights and fireflies dancing around me as I
walked. Maybe seeing Grant was the last little bit of closure I needed to move
on completely. He still takes my breath away. I know now that I will always
love him. This pain in my heart, the palpable twinge, the longing ache,
hopefully will dim as time goes by. As lovers come and go. As these memories
fade a little bit every day.

“I saw him tonight.”

“Him?” She raises her eyebrows at me and
licks the back of her spoon before scraping the inside of the carton for
another bite.

I nod and load my spoon again too. “The
one I never talk about. Grant.”

“He was there? As in, doing to 5 in 5
thing?” She sit upright and turns to face me, a look of incredulity on her
face. “Was he one of your dates?”

“Yup. Round four.”

She buries her face in her hands while
trying to keep the spoon out of her hair. “Lauren, I am so sorry! This is all
my fault!”

I laugh. “Come on, Harlow. Think about
it. How could you possibly have known that the guy I never told you about,
whose existence you didn’t know of until about ten seconds ago, would be at a
dating event you dragged me to? You have nothing to be sorry for. And like I
said,” I tell her as I lean further to rest my head against the back of the
couch, “It’s all good. I had epiphanies and stuff.”

She leans back with me. “Epiphanies and
stuff,” she repeats, sounding dubious. “So tell me, then, what epiphanies can a
girl have while speed dating with socially awkward freak shows and long lost
boyfriends?”

“I have to live the best life I can to
honor my sister. I keep her alive through me.”

Harlow shakes her head. “This is what
you get from socially awkward freaks? Impressive! I should take you every week
so we can find solutions to world hunger and a cure for cancer.”

I laugh. “Not really, no, although the
eyeball guy has a lot more to him than I ever would’ve imagined. He’s living
proof of why it’s never a good idea to judge a book by its cover. Most people would
burn that book after the first page.” I scrape my spoon around the outside of
the ice cream lump we’ve created in the middle of the carton, wanting to get
the soft, melty goods for myself.

“Quit taking the best part,” she
protests, trying to grab the carton from me.

I let her take it. “We should order some
Sharky’s. I didn’t eat dinner tonight, although I came close to eating. An
amorous hipster did smear some food on my face and hands in a pathetic attempt
at wooing me.”

Harlow shakes her head and gets up to
put the carton back in the freezer. “Um, ew.” She sets down the carton. “I
agree. If I keep eating this, I’ll get sick. Order me a Caesar salad with
dressing on the side while I change. Should we pick up or have it delivered?”

“Delivery,” I say. “I’m not getting
dressed again. It’s pajama time for me.”

“And then I’m gonna need to hear about
these weirdos you picked up tonight,” she says as she disappears down the hall
and into her room.

I find the menu stuck to the side of our
fridge with a magnet and call Sharky’s, ordering her salad and a turkey avocado
on a croissant for me. Harlow returns in her own sweats, hair piled into a wild
and loose bun on top of her head, gorgeous green eyes now hidden behind the
coke bottle lenses in her glasses.

“It’ll be here in a half hour,” I inform
her as we sit back on the couch to kill some time.

“So your sister...Coral? How did you
arrive at your conclusion about living life for her based on what happened to
you tonight?”

“I don’t know. I was one breath away from
another panic attack all night long...and then I saw Grant. He was everything
that was good and decent and stable in my life for a long time. Don’t get me
wrong, my parents are great, but he was the one I trusted above all others.
Sadly, he’s the one I treated the worst.”

“Isn’t that the way it always is?”
Harlow asks, looking thoughtful. “There are times I want to kill my mom, but
I’d kill for her, you know? We have the biggest fights sometimes but no matter
what, she’s the one who will always be there for me. I always call her first,
good news, bad news, bad hair day, broken nail day. Whatever. She’s my rock.”

“I saw another guy tonight, another
blast from the past. Oliver.”

“Your midget boyfriend?”

“He’s not an actual midget, and most
midgets find that term incredibly insensitive.”

She shrugs. “If it walks like a midget
and talks like a midget...”

I throw a pillow at her to shut her up.
“Oliver. He’s fantastic. He was there too, trying to convince women like us to
run away to join a circus with him, and they all took him seriously. Can you
believe it?” I can’t help laughing.

I sigh and keep going. “He had no idea
what I’d done, what happened with Coral, or how I got so sick so fast. I pulled
away from everyone and everything I cared about because I was worried I’d screw
up, hurt them all again. I think seeing Grant was...I don’t know...good for me.
I needed to see him happy and successful. I know he’s okay and he’s moved on.

“But seeing Oliver...I think talking it
out with him got my brain working. He got me thinking of what I could do to
honor the life of a girl much too young to die. I mean, what would she say if
she saw me lying all stinky and depressed on the couch earlier tonight? I can
almost hear her voice telling me to get up and get a life. Will it sound crazy
if I say sometimes I feel like she’s with me?” I look down and shake my head,
my hands twitching nervously. “Maybe that’s just me not wanting to let her go.
I don’t know, but she always looked up to me, for whatever reason. I don’t want
to disappoint her.”

“So you have a plan? What is it?” Harlow
asks quietly. I think she’s afraid I might cry.

“First of all, you stop looking at me
like I’m going to spontaneously combust, and we eat our take out.”

She smiles ruefully at me. “Okay, and
then what?”

“I find a job and do it well. Then I
roll my parents into starting the Coral Brooks scholarship fund for foster
girls, using the life insurance policy they had on her. What do you think?”

She nods approvingly. “I like it.”

“My job hunting efforts have been a
little lackluster, but—”

“A
little
? No kidding!” Harlow
snorts.

I glare at her. “My plan doesn’t require
any commentary from you.”

“And yet, you will hear it.”

I laugh. “I know, I know...”

A knock at the door interrupts us a few
minutes later as I finish fleshing out details for Harlow’s opinion. “Hey, I
got this one,” I tell her as I reach for my purse on the table.

“You can barely pay rent right now,” she
protests, reaching for her own. “I got it.” She hurries into the hall.

“Hey, I forgot to tell you, I might have
a temp gig to help me get rent money until...” My voice trails off.

My huge orange purse is loaded with a
little too much stuff, but usually my wallet sits right on top, my life
preserver floating atop a sea of worthless cosmetic flotsam. But it’s not
there. I start ripping frantically through my bag, looking for it. I throw out
my phone, a notebook, pens in every shade, a few tampons, crinkled up receipts
and gum wrappers. No wallet.

I dig through it again, checking for
holes in the purse’s lining. Harlow comes back to the table holding a plastic
bag, loaded with two styrofoam containers brim full with Sharky’s
deliciousness. “I can’t find it!”

“Can’t find what?” she asks, pulling out
her salad. She slides the bag over to me and pops her container open to inspect
the food.

“My wallet! I know I had it, I just...”

My voice trails off as I recall the last
moment I saw Grant. I was so flustered that I knocked my purse to the floor and
didn’t bother making sure I had everything. I just grabbed what I could see and
shoved it all back in so I could get out of there. “I left it at the coffee
shop. Are they still open?”

We glance at the old analog clock
ticking on the wall above the table. Harlow pulls a face. “Sorry, but they
closed an hour ago.”

Of course. I guess it could be worse.
It’s not like I have much to lose in there. Any potential thief will be
saddened by the serious lack of cash and credits cards that will most
definitely get declined. It will probably end up in a trash can somewhere near
the shop, but I still feel naked. Funny how all those official little papers
and cards make me feel like someone.

I think hard. Maybe I dropped it in the
front when I pulled my keys out to unlock the door? “I’ll go look outside, just
in case.”

I head for the door, unlock everything,
and step onto the patio, leaving it open so the light from the hall streams
onto the small cement pad in front of our cute little garden apartment. A row
of shrubs separates our courtyard from the neighbors, so l kneel down and reach
into the foliage, shaking branches with the hope that my wallet will fall out
like manna from heaven. The sky is an orange gray now that dark clouds have
rolled in. I smell rain in the air. I’m crawling around on all fours, my hands
getting scratched and shredded when my wallet magically appears before my eyes,
floating right in front of me.

“What the..!” I fall onto my backside
and sprawl out on the concrete. My head hits the base of the shrubs and what
little long hair I have gets tangled with a sharp collection of twigs at the
base, and all I can do is laugh. My eyes are cinched shut and I’m laughing like
a maniac. Tonight starts with an eyeball guy and ends with me getting ambushed
by a flying wallet and attacked by bushes. How much more bizarre can my life
get at this point?