Harder (7 page)

A policeman has West facedown over the back of a patrol car with his legs spread. His forehead is mashed against metal, the seam between the shoulders of his suit jacket split open, the white of his shirt showing through.

“Excuse me.” I grab a passing officer’s arm. “Excuse me!”

She shakes me off, talks into her radio. I step closer to the car and try to get the attention of the guy with West. “Is he being arrested? What about his rights? He didn’t do anything, it wasn’t his fault, he’s not a criminal—damn it, you’re not
listening
to me—”

West barks, “Caro!”

How mean he looks with that bruise blooming on his cheek. How much like the man they think he is. A roughneck brawling at a funeral.

“Knock it off,” he says. “Let them do their jobs.”

“But it wasn’t your fault!”

“They’ll fucking figure that out if you give them a few seconds’ peace.”

When a third cop takes my upper arm in a tight grip and leads me away from West, I bite my tongue. I end up against the building, beside Joan.

“I can’t believe this,” I say. “He was trying to
stop
it.”

“If he keeps ahold of his temper, he’ll be fine,” she says.

“Nothing about this situation is fine.”

I press the back of my head into the building’s vinyl siding and try to breathe.

West’s mom is bundled into the back of a patrol car, where she abruptly flips from blank catatonia to screaming again in her hoarse, ravaged voice.

“His funeral!” she’s yelling. “His fucking funeral!”

Bo gets taken to the station in another car. West’s uncle
Jack goes to the hospital with a broken nose, and the rest of the aunts and uncles and cousins disperse. I don’t know if they’re heading to the hospital, the police station, or if they’re just done with the whole scene.

West is allowed to stand, and he gives his statement in the parking lot out of my earshot.

An officer comes over to talk to me. I tell him what I know. It takes longer than I thought it would, and by the time I’m finished West is nowhere in sight.

The lot is nearly empty.

The funeral director appears at my elbow. “If you’ll come inside, miss.”

I can’t think of any reason not to follow him. My feet operate on their own set of instructions. My face feels stiff. I think I might be a little shocky.

He shows me into the viewing room, where a small group stands in front of the coffin—West, Joan, Frankie, the Tomlinsons. All that’s left of the mourners, I guess, because as soon as he deposits me next to West, he takes a place at a lectern beside the coffin.

“What’s going on?” I ask West.

“Funeral.”

“Now?”

He finds my hand, squeezes it once hard, and lets go.

It soon becomes clear that whatever program was planned has been tossed out the window. We’re treated to a short, generic speech, and then we’re all asked to step out into the other side of the room behind a fabric-covered panel while they close the coffin.

The Tomlinsons hold an angry-whisper conference in the corner. If I had to guess, I’d say Dr. T wants to leave and his wife is refusing.

I can’t imagine why she would want to stay.

Frankie is folded in a chair, her arms wrapped around her knees. West sits beside her. He’s missing from his face, all the anger wiped away and replaced with the impassive blank nothingness I remember from when he was at Putnam and we were both denying how we felt about each other.

I don’t want anything from anyone
that expression says.

It makes me want to give him the world on a plate. Give him absolutely everything he could ever desire.

It makes me want to apologize for his lot in life and for the differences between his world and mine, because West is amazing, and his life sucks.

His life is always going to suck if he stays here, in his mother’s orbit, and assigns himself the job of keeping order.

There isn’t anything I can do about it.

After a while, the panels roll open. The coffin is wheeled outside on a sort of pallet. We watch them load it into the hearse to drive it uphill to the cemetery, which is just behind the funeral home.

At the graveside, West remains impassive until we’re invited to throw flowers or earth on the coffin. Then he steps out of the circle of mourners to where a shovel leans against a nearby utility truck, grabs it, and digs into the pile of dirt at the head of the grave. Tossing in one shovelful after another until the earth stops sliding off the domed lid and starts to accumulate.

This is not, obviously, what the funeral director had in mind, but no one seems inclined to put a stop to it. Joan leads Frankie back inside. Mrs. Tomlinson follows. Dr. Tomlinson didn’t show up at the grave at all.

West and I remain, along with the funeral director, who’s giving me a pleading look.

I shrug.

West shovels. His eyes are fevered, his cheeks pink.

The funeral director returns to the building.

I start to wonder how long it takes to fill a grave. I can’t imagine leaving him here alone.

Spotting a second shovel in the back of the truck, I retrieve it and carry it to the dirt pile. West’s gaze locks with mine.

We stare at each other.

There’s no tenderness in it. It’s a clash of wills.

It’s him saying,
Stay the fuck out of this
, and me saying,
Make me
.

It’s him snapping,
I don’t want you here. You don’t belong in Silt. I don’t need you
.

It’s me shouting,
You don’t fucking know what you need. Stop being so stubborn. Take what I’m trying to give you
. Take
it
.

What I want to do is drop the shovel and walk over to where he is. To slip my arms around him, press myself against him, flatten my breasts into his chest, kiss him until he has no choice but to kiss me back—to kiss me the way he used to, sparks striking into a burn so fast and hot that sometimes we couldn’t get our clothes off quick enough, couldn’t manage to do more than unzip jeans and shove underwear out of the way just far enough to join our bodies together.

It’s unbelievable how badly I want that back. How urgently I wish we could get lost in each other, find joy again.

I understand, though, that it’s not what he wants from me.

I take off my heels, sink the blade into the soil, move it through the air until it hovers over the gleaming black surface of the box West’s father will rot in.

The thump of earth landing on steel gives me a cheap satisfaction.

I’m awkward with the shovel, losing more dirt than I get
in, dropping some of it on my feet, where it gets between my toes, moist and muddy. Within a few minutes, my back starts to hurt. Then my hands.

West moves fluidly, his body graceful in action. The blade of his shovel sings.

Still, it takes a long time. I get blisters.

I don’t stop.

The sun drops toward the horizon.

When we finish, he takes my shovel and returns them both to the truck. He stands beside the grave, hands loose and empty.

He looks like a boy—so much like a boy that I understand viscerally that he was as young as Frankie once. He was a kid who wanted a father and got nothing but disappointment. A boy who got punched, kicked, abandoned, and then told to stop holding on to the past. To let it go.

His mother, his grandmother, this whole family—they all asked him, again and again, to give his father one more chance. Maybe this time Wyatt would be different. Maybe this time life would be fair and kind, and happiness would be possible.

It never was, though. Not for West.

I don’t know how he can survive here.

I don’t know how he’s not crushed, because it crushes me just to watch him. This whole place—it’s beautiful, that winding road from the airport, the trees in the mountains, the buttes and the ocean. It’s not fair that it’s beautiful, because it’s so outrageously cruel to the man I love.

If West stays here, this place will kill him.

I step closer, skirt around the grave until I can feel the heat coming off his arm.

I touch him, my hand on the curve of his shoulder. “West.”

It’s not fair to ask him for anything right now, but I don’t
want to take from him. I only want him to lean on me. I want to give him rest, oblivion, escape.
Something
.

I’ve been trying to give him space, trying not to dig up feelings he can’t handle when he’s already got so much to deal with, but I can’t take it anymore. I can’t believe that this is
better
—that somehow it’s
better
for West not to have whatever comfort I can give him, it’s
better
for me to be three feet away from him and telling myself I can’t get closer, not now, not tomorrow, maybe not ever.

How the fuck is this better? For who? Not for me. Not for West.

Surely not for West.

I move around to his front and insinuate my hands into the space between his arms and his sides. I rest my cheek against his heaving chest.

“If you want me,” I say. “No strings. No anything—just, if you want to forget for an hour. Whatever you want.”

I tighten my arms around him. He’s so much harder than he used to be. All this armor between him and the world. I want him to know that I see it there. I know what it is, and if he wants to take it off with me, he can.

I love him.

I love him so fucking much, and this is all I’ve got to offer that he can possibly take. So I squeeze him as tight as I can until he yields.

His weight bows into me. Not all, but a fraction of it. A crack in the blank concrete wall of his self-denial.

His hand comes to the back of my head, the nape of my neck, pressing my face into the ragged sound of his breathing.

“Caro,” he says into my hair.

It’s the first time he’s said my name like he used to. Like it’s precious.

Like I’m precious.

“I can come out to Bo’s,” I whisper. “Or we could find a motel. Whatever you need.”

When I lift my chin, his eyes are closed, so I kiss him.

I kiss his mouth. The margin of it. The swell of the bruise on his cheekbone.

His soft lips, his lowered eyelashes. This boy I love.

I kiss beneath his jaw, my tongue flicking out to taste his sweat, his skin, and then his hands are on me, lifting my chin, and he’s kissing me back.

It’s no tender reunion—it’s a swan dive right into the middle of where we used to be, a plunge into blind lust and tension and sex. His tongue, his frustration, his taste, his heat, his lips on mine, his hands guiding me, giving me all of that,
all of it
, and I get carried away.

Stoned on the taste of him, high on possibility, I tell him, “It’s going to be okay.” Not because I believe it, but because I want to. “We’ll get through this.”

And that’s all it takes for me to wreck it.

All it takes for him to take his hands off me and draw away.

When he opens his eyes, I can see my error written there. Because what sounds like hope to me isn’t hope to West. It’s just a reminder that he can’t have anything he wants.

“There’s no
we
.” He steps back. Brushes his hands over his thighs. “I don’t need anything from you.”

I know what he’s doing. Of course I do.

He does, too—he has to, because his words are so patently ridiculous. My chest is still heaving. My lips are wet and full. My whole body aches, and West is saying, “You should think about going home.”

It hurts.

God. It hurts so much.

But even as it hurts, I don’t
believe
him. I’ve had West inside
my body. I’ve locked my gaze with his for that first deep thrust, and I know what he looks like when he wants me. I know how he kisses when he’s hurting, how he craves the oblivion our bodies can make together, the comfort afterward, the tired quiet space to talk in, to tell me what’s weighing him down.

I know better than anyone how to read the language of West denying himself what he wants.

So I let him walk down the hill alone. I watch his broad back get smaller, watch him pull off his suit jacket and ball it up and throw it in the Dumpster outside the funeral home. I watch him disappear around the corner of the building, and I count off the time in my head.

Ten minutes.

Then I’m going after him.

The funeral home is hushed. Quiet as a doctor’s office or a chapel, places people aren’t supposed to enjoy themselves.

Suspended places.

The door into the viewing room stands open, but there’s no one in there. No one in the hall, no one in the family lounge area.

I walk out into the parking lot. The sun has dropped beyond the horizon line, and although there’s still enough light to see, dusk is gathering.

I’m tired. I want a hot shower and a warm bed, and I’m going to make West take me to Bo’s tonight. Even if he won’t touch me, I’m sick of sleeping on carpet squares in an attic that makes me sneeze. I don’t want to wake up tomorrow morning with crusty, red-rimmed eyes.

Joan’s Chevy sedan is gone. She must have taken Frankie back to her place.

I walk to the truck and check the door. Unlocked. Once I’m settled into the passenger seat, I text him—
Where are you?
—then glance at my email.

Tired and lonely, I text my dad.

Just wanted to check in. I’m fine.

I think how lucky I am, how extraordinarily lucky. Being with West’s family, seeing the way they are, helps me remember that my life has basically been amazing in every way that matters. Sure, I lost my mom, but I wasn’t old enough when she died to remember having her. Who I remember is my dad, and he’s always been there for me and my sisters. Crabby and controlling, yes, but I’ve never doubted that he wants the best for me. Not for a second. And whatever minor differences I have with him, they’re always going to be just that: minor.

I send another text.
I’m glad you’re my dad. I love you.

I wait a minute, but he doesn’t write back. Neither does West.

I lay my head down on the seat and close my eyes, hoping West will turn up before it gets too chilly. Even in the summer, it’s cold here at night. Something to do with the mountains.