Finally, Forever (17 page)

I shake my head. “I wasn’t aware.”

“All I can wear are pants with elastic waistbands.  Do you know how degrading that is?”

I think about the image. “Actually, that sounds really comfortable.”

“Oh, you would say that.” She wipes a tear out of the corner of her eye. “What do you want, Dylan?”

“I want you to come home,” I say.

She laughs at my suggestion. “Home?” she says. “Where’s home? With Mom and Dad?” She shakes her head. “That’s not my home anymore. Home is with Mike. I belong with him, I can’t just leave him.”

“But—” 

“What am I supposed to do?” she interrupts me. “Follow your example? Fall in love and then run away and make the guy suffer while I ‘figure myself out?’ Is that the way it works?” 

I shake my head and step around the attack. I don’t want to fight with my sister. That’s not why I came here. I take a deep breath and sort out my thoughts, choosing my words carefully as if I’m gently poking a fire, trying not to make any sparks fly.

“You know I love you Serena, even if we haven’t been living in the same house the last few years. A lot of people leave after high school. Most people move away or go to college. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about you guys. It doesn’t mean I don’t think about you and Mom and Dad all the time and carry you with me everywhere I go.”

“I know,” she says. “And I’ve always respected you for leaving. I’ve always looked up to you.”

“You? Looked up to me?” I ask.

“Of course I did. A lot of people say they’re going do these crazy, wild things. But hardly anyone does. You follow through with everything you say you’re going to do. You never let anyone try to hold you back.” She meets my eyes. “But then let me do the same thing. You’re not the only one who wants
to be independent.”

“It’s d
ifferent, Serena,” I say gently. I pick up a bag of Cheetos on the table and hand her a few. She accepts them, swallows a mouthful and then grabs the bag from me and digs her hand inside. Her eyes lose a little of their guarded hostility. Maybe Mike was right.

“I didn’t have another life depending on me,” I say. “Sure, I was independent
, but I also wasn’t nine months pregnant driving around the country.”

Serena looks down at her basketball-sized stomach.

“Do you have any idea what you’re going to do when he’s born?  You’re going to need a doctor. You’re going to need to stay put for a while. Let me help you get settled.”

Serena stares at the wall in front of us. Her lips are tight.

“I know what I’m doing.” 

That’s not the point I’m trying to make. I choose my next words carefully. “You need to think about Luke. This isn’t just about you anymore. Please don’t be selfish about this.”

She looks over at me. “You should talk. What about Gray?”

“What about him?”

“You’ve never considered Gray. Yes, I have a baby to consider, so it’s not just about me. But a relationship is the same thing. It shouldn’t have to take having a baby to understand that it’s not all about you.”

I narrow my eyes.

“You’re right,” I admit.

“So don’t call me selfish,
Dylan. I’m actually trying to make this work with Mike because I love him. We’re figuring it out. I didn’t want to stay home and have Mom and Dad tell me how to raise my kid. I don’t like being told what to do either.”

“But you’re going to need help, Serena. Just let us help you.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t want your help.”

My stomach starts to knot.
“So, that’s it?” I ask. “What about Mom? Would you let her fly out here?”

She looks down at her feet.

“Whenever I have a problem Mom just hounds me. She tells me what to do. She’ll make everything worse.”

“I’m sorry,” I tell her.
I’m reaching for anything to make her change her mind. “Maybe it feels like she’s smothering you. I guess love does that sometimes. But isn’t that better than no support at all?”

Her eyes start to tear up.

“When I’m ready, I’ll call you. I promise. When I’m ready. But I don’t want you here right now. If you really want to help me, leave me alone.” Her stubborn eyes tell me the debate is over.

I breathe out a sigh.

“Fine,” I say.

Gray

Dylan silently slides into my car and shuts the door. I climb in and start the ignition. She’s scaring me. She hasn’t spoken since she walked out of the green room. I can only guess at the verbal shrapnel that’s cutting her up inside. I don’t want to say the usual stupid catch phrases.
What’s wrong? You okay? What can I do? Do you want to talk about it?
So, I just stay silent.

The stereo’s
loud and I reach over to turn it down and Dylan catches my hand.

“
Will you put in some music?” she asks, and I nod. I can always handle the job of musical supervisor. I can sense the feelings flooding her mind and I look through my CD’s for something that might help. I slide in an album by The Lumineers.

We drive through downtown Flagstaff,
passing historic hotels with brick facades and welcoming green awnings. We’re over seven thousand feet high, but I don’t think Dylan has ever felt lower.

I keep my eyes alert for the nearest highway sign out of here. I
haven’t been to Flagstaff in four years. The last time I was here, I was at a hospital with my parents where we found out from a room full of strangers that my sister was dead. And we didn’t get there in time to say goodbye. She died before she went into surgery. They warned us before we saw her—she had head wounds from the accident and she wouldn’t look the same. I can still see her purple-gray lips and pale skin. I remember how cold the room felt and how I saw black spots behind my eyes before I passed out.

I vowed I would never return to this place again.

My foot pushes down on the accelerator when I see a highway ramp.

I wou
ldn’t have come here for anyone except Dylan. I realize I never stopped loving her. I was in love with her the moment I saw her face in Omaha. Because I didn’t say no to her. It’s not very often you agree to revisit your demons. People don’t normally welcome back their worst nightmares.

My eyes start to blur. I don’t even know if I’m
entering the right highway. But I need to put some distance between us and this town and the driving helps. It’s a small amount of control in this world so out of my control. I like how the highways bend and turn out here. It forces you to focus on driving, not just zone out like you can put life on auto pilot.

While
I drive, I watch Dylan out of the corner of my eye. She sits back in the seat and her eyes are locked on some point in the distance. I turn the music up louder and I understand how she feels because I’ve been there.

I see a motel off the road and I slow down. It’s
hardly visible behind a thick wall of pine trees. The parking lot is on a narrow side street, and I like that it’s hidden. Sometimes, when life slams a door in your face your only defense is to shut it out for a while. Dylan doesn’t understand this, her mind doesn’t go that dark. She never feels the need to hide, so tonight I can show her how.

I park and look out at the moon and the stars. They
glow above us like a chandelier, suspended by invisible chords. I wonder what keeps them from crashing down.

I turn off the motor but the music is still playing around us, surrounding us and we are just
surfaces for sound to bounce of off. Dylan shifts in her seat and her eyes look over at me and they focus on mine. I can tell the windstorm in her head is starting to settle.

“Thanks,” is all she says.

I get out of the car and walk across the parking lot to the lobby but my mind isn’t in my body. It’s floating with the starlight, looking down on my precarious situation. My movements are in slow motion, or maybe I’m simply trying to stretch time out and make it last. I know this might be my last night with Dylan.

The hotel manger hands me a room key with a plastic handle.
When I find our room, Dylan heads for the bathroom and I bring in our bags. In the side of my duffle bag is a box of condoms I bought at a gas station this morning. I doubt Dylan will be in the mood, but it’s better to be safe than, well, in her sister’s situation.

I
sit on the end of the bed and look around the room. The carpeting is dark green, like seaweed, and the walls are hung with generic ocean prints. I feel like the bed is an anchored ship.

I hear the shower running in the bathroom and
I scroll through channels on the TV. I have a feeling Dylan will want to crash after all the drama today. I hear the water turn off and a few minutes later the door cracks open and a puff of steam lazily spills into the room. Dylan walks out in her bare legs and the green over-sized t-shirt. She’s combing her wet hair with a brush she bought earlier today and it falls straight and dark, touching the tops of her shoulders. I look at her legs and her wet shining hair and I remind myself to behave, but the ways she looks at me, like she’s looking inside of me, makes it hard.

“Good news.” My voice cuts through the thick silence. “
Sleepless in Seattle
is on. Our favorite movie stars.”

Dylan
doesn’t respond. She keeps her eyes on me and narrows them a little.

“
Okay, you’ve said seven words in the last hour,” I say. “That’s a record for you. And it’s really freaking me out.”

My eyes follow her as she
walks over to the edge of the bed. She stands in front of me and takes the remote out of my hand and turns off the TV with a buzzing snap. My hand still lingers there, hovering in the air, in the space between us. I have strings and they are connected to her hands and she’s playing me. And she knows it.

Dylan
tosses the remote on the floor and she climbs onto my lap. Her legs straddle my waist. She lifts her shirt over her head and she isn’t wearing anything underneath. Her freckled skin glows in the golden light.

I inhale a sharp breath. I look over her body, something I couldn’t do last night in the dark. I take my time, drinking in every soft feature. I wrap my hands around her hips and pull her close. She rests her arms on my shoulder
s and her fingertips feel like tiny bites on my skin.

The only sound in the room is the shower still dripping beads of water onto the linoleum. I can almost hear the steam rolling as I move my hands higher up her waist and all these emotions flood through my head and into my heart and then explode through my veins. Even my eyes hurt, everything hurts because I am holding the only thing I want. I
press my lips against hers before I say something stupid, like ask her to marry me, or do something stupid, like cry. My hands are shaking and that’s the scary thing about love. It makes you shake.

I decide to stop thinking and let my mind drown in this
fucking fragile, volatile thing that is happening between us.

All the blood in my body rushes to one place with so much force it makes me shudder. I push her down on the bed and climb on top of her. I kick off my shorts and shoes without letting go of her lips. I come up for air only to peel off my t-shirt. I reach down to the
floor next to the bed and grab the condoms out of my bag.

I rip the wrapper open with my teeth and kiss her while I unwrap it and put it on with one, easy glide. I feel like I’m laying claim over
Dylan. Every time I move inside of her I want to say
mine.
You’re mine. I’m staking something that has always been mine, that should always be mine. I’m immortal and high and tightening and pulling apart all at the same time. I put my hand between her legs, a trick I learned the first summer we met, and pretty soon her legs are shaking along with mine and her breathing turns into a shudder. I sink into her and hold on.

She pants for air and traces her fingers around my temples and through my hair and I’m pulled apart. I’m done and we’re both breathing hard, but I don’t pull out. I press all my weight into her and breath
e.

“Are you okay?” she asks. I feel her throat move under my mouth.

Yes. No. Perfect. Awful. Fuck me. No pun intended.

I nod and blink against her skin as tears gather in the corner of my eyes and I’m crying. I’m fucking crying. I turn my face in
to the pillow and squeeze my eyes hard and blink away the tears. I’m afraid to move, afraid I’ll fall apart and Dylan doesn’t say anything. Her fingers just swirl and move and play. I roll off of her and she rests her head on my chest and after a few minutes she falls asleep on top of me with her arm draped over my shoulder. I stare up at the ceiling and feel like I’m in the middle of nowhere and the center of everything.

Maybe we’re just two fucked up souls, lost, only complete when we’re together. Maybe that’s what love is all about. Being humble enough to admit you can’t make it on your own. You need a person in order to call a place home. You need love to save you from yourself. You need to love another person so you give a little something every day.