Instead of You (10 page)

   “When she showers is pretty much the only time I can change the sheets.  Will you help me?”

   “Of course.”

   He gave me a sad, small smile, and I followed him down the hall.  “She lies in bed most of the time, and only showers every three or four days, so the sheets get dirty pretty fast,” he said, whispering to me as he grabbed a clean set of sheets from the linen closet.  “I change them while she’s in the shower, and I’m not even sure she notices.”

   I was torn between feeling terrible for Mrs. Wallace and the depression she must be living with, and feeling equally terrible for Hayes, having to watch his mother fall apart slowly right in front of him.  Obviously the hope was that eventually Mrs. Wallace would pull herself out of the darkness she’d been thrust into, but it was unsettling watching someone as young as Hayes having to care for his mother as if she were suffering from some other illness besides just grief.  It made me wonder, if I were put in a similar situation, would I be able to keep it together as much as Hayes seemed to be.

   The answer to the silent question was more than likely a resounding no.

   We stood on opposite sides of the bed and pulled sheets off, along with pillowcases, then hastily worked together to replace them with clean ones.  Just as we finished and I had scooped up the dirty linens, we heard the water shut off, so I scurried out of the room.  I had just closed the lid on the washer when I heard the oven timer go off.

   I entered the kitchen and stopped mid-step when I saw Hayes pulling the casserole out of the oven.  Perhaps it was stupid, but watching him taking something out of the oven, doing something so domestic, made him seem so much older than he had just a week ago.  He was a grown man, an adult,
my teacher
for crying out loud.  We were worlds apart, with so much more than time and space between us.

   “Well, is there anything else you need help with?” I asked.  But I immediately followed up with, “If not, I’ll just head home.”  I was halfway to the door, ready to go home and sleep away the rest of that weird day when his voice stopped me.

   “Would you like to have dinner with me?”

Chapter Nine

Hayes

   I watched her eyes get wide with my invitation, and I should have expected that reaction, should have anticipated her surprise.  It didn’t make it burn any less.

   I’d spent over an hour ignoring her during class, and that felt wrong.  It felt like the biggest crime against nature to purposefully ignore her.  To not look at her, to not admire her, or watch her expressions change and wonder what was going through her mind.  I’d spent the last two weeks doing just that; using all my time with her, any I was lucky enough to happen upon, to take her in.  So, having to pretend I didn’t see her all the time while in class, well, it made me hungry for the sight of her.

   “Sure,” she said quietly.  “I can stay.”

   Not, “I’d love to stay,” or “I thought you’d never ask.”  No, she was just able to stay.  I berated myself for acting like it mattered.  I’d take pieces of her any way I could get them, even if it was a pity casserole. 

   I brought the big baking dish to the table as she gathered plates and utensils.  I tried not to think about how many times she must have stayed to have dinner with Cory, how she knew where everything was.  She might have even known the house better than me at that point.  I hadn’t come home much in the last two years.  Not since I kissed her on my brother’s birthday and realized how big of an asshole I was for it.  No.  I’d stayed away after that.  I had tried not to think about them together often, but I knew if I saw them together, once they’d crossed the line from friends to more than that, it would probably hurt more than I could imagine.

   We dished up our meals in silence, the only sound was the rain hitting the windows from a typical Floridian rainstorm. After a few moments of chewing and taking quiet drinks of our waters, letting moments fall between us like heavy rocks to the bottom of the ocean, I finally had to admit to myself that eating a sympathy casserole with Kenzie wasn’t the life-altering, romantic meal I was delusional enough to hope it would be.

   “I think it’s great you were able to work something out so you could stay with your mom.”  McKenzie’s voice broke through my depressing inner monologue.  “I’m sure she’s really thankful you stayed.”

   I swallowed, but it felt as if I were pushing down more than food; I was forcing down so much, there wasn’t room for the meal I was eating.

   “I’m not sure she really realizes what’s happening.”  I paused and watched as the confusion moved over her face, starting with her eyebrows moving together, then her eyes narrowing at me, followed by the pursing of her lips, which finally made me look away.  “It’s not like I sat her down and told her I was staying to make sure she was all right.”  I shrugged, pushing the food around my plate with my fork.  “I’m pretty sure if you went and spoke with her right now she couldn’t tell you what day it is, or how many days she’s been in her bed.  She’s just not all there.”

   It was Kenzie’s turn to push her food around for a moment, then she whispered, “I can’t imagine.”

   “How are you holding up?” I asked, even though the answer had the potential to maim me.  It was a horrible situation to be in.  I wanted the girl I loved to be fine, I didn’t want her in pain; but I wanted my brother’s girlfriend to miss him, to be somewhat lost without him.  “Was it difficult to go back to school today?”

   She looked slightly panicked at my question, her eyes widening and mouth parting just slightly.  She didn’t have time to answer though because at that moment my mother made an appearance.

   “McKenzie, honey,” my mother said softly as she walked toward her, sniffling, wiping her hand beneath her nose.  Her hair was damp and she only wore an old tattered robe my father had gotten her for Mother’s Day years ago.  “I found this yesterday in the bag that came home from the hospital with all of Mark and Cory’s belongings in it.”  My lungs froze, wondering where she’d hidden that bag.  I’d hidden it in the laundry room, knowing she wasn’t ready to deal with it, but then it had disappeared.  I’d spent hours looking for it, knowing the contents had the potential to hurt.  She made it all the way to McKenzie and then held her hand out toward her.  Sitting in her palm was a little black velvet box.  “This was in Cory’s pocket when he was killed,” she said, a sob fracturing her words.

   If McKenzie had looked panicked before, she looked absolutely petrified now.  Her eyes were locked on that little black box, wide with what I could only describe as fear.  My mom motioned with her hand, encouraging McKenzie to take it.

   Kenzie’s hand reached out, shaking, and her trembling fingers closed around it.

   Something wasn’t right here.

   “He must have wanted to give it to you on his birthday,” Mom said, no longer even trying to rein in her tears.  “I think it’s some sort of promise ring.”

  
Shit.

   McKenzie slowly opened the box. 

   Then she not-so-slowly stood and ran from the house.

   In an instant I was chasing after her.  I ran through the front door she hadn’t closed in her haste, and yelled her name as I sprinted down the driveway.

   “McKenzie, wait!” 

   The rain hadn’t stopped and it was dark outside, but I could still see her thirty feet in front of me, her arms flailing and feet kicking up water behind her.  I pushed myself harder knowing that if I didn’t catch up with her soon, she’d reach her house and once inside it would be easy for her to ignore me, to run and hide.  I managed to make it to her, wrapped my arm around her elbow, and spun her toward me.

   I was unprepared for the tears I saw falling from her eyes, mixing in with the raindrops hitting her face.  Seeing her cry was like switching something on inside of me and I was instantly pulling her into my arms, uncaring of the rain quickly soaking through my clothes.  All that mattered was that she was upset and I was there to comfort her.

   “I’m sorry the ring upset you.”  I had to speak louder than I wanted to be heard over the rain pelting the pavement.  I felt the contents of my stomach churn when I realized what I had to say next.  “It must be really difficult to think about what you’ve lost—what life would have been like for you and Cory.”

   She went still in my arms.  The cries stopped.  Her breathing halted.  She was like a block of ice pressed against me: cold and hard.  Suddenly she was pushing away from me like my touch hurt her, like I’d caused her pain, and that caused
me
pain.

   “Kenz, wait, what’s wrong?”  She kept walking away from me, so I lunged forward and grabbed her arm again.  That time she didn’t need me to spin her around, because she yanked her arm from my grasp and was suddenly just inches from me, looking up at me with agony in her eyes.  “What is it?”  I asked, my words a plea.  “Please, just talk to me.”

   “I thought—” she started, but an angry sob escaped instead of words.  But she continued.  “I thought I was going to spend my whole life with Cory.”

   The cold rain was no longer a match for the hot pain that came from hearing those words.

   “And I thought it was going to be difficult, at the very least, less than ideal, to spend a life with someone I didn’t love.  But now,” she said, throwing an angry hand into the air, “Now I know I’ll have to live with the guilt of never telling him how I really felt.  Every time someone tells me they’re sorry, sorry for
me
, I feel like a fake.”

   “What are you talking about?” I asked, my heart begging me, pleading with me, to make her talk faster, to make her words come quicker.

   “He would have given me that ring, Hayes.  He would have slipped it on my finger and told me he was promising to marry me one day.  And I would have let him.”

   “And?” I begged.

   “And it would have been a lie,” she yelled.  Rainwater flew off her lips, dripped from her eyelashes.  “I lied to him for two years, maybe longer, and I definitely lied to myself.”  She dropped her face into her hands, crying, shoulders shaking, and I didn’t dare try to guess what it was she meant.

   “What was a lie?” I asked as I gently rested my hands on her shoulders.

   “Everything.”

   “Kenzie,” I said, stepping as close as I could get.  My hands moved up her shoulders, across her neck, and came to rest on each side of her face.  The last time my hands were on her face was the one and only time I’d kissed her.  “What are you saying?”

   “I didn’t love him, Hayes.  I never fell in love with him, even though, sometimes, I wanted to.  It would have been so much easier to love him instead of….”

   “Instead of what, Kenzie?” I urged.

   “Instead of you.”

   She was looking up at me, but I didn’t see sadness in her eyes, I saw fear.  Her words sank into me, absorbed into my skin, and flowed through my veins.

   “Me?”  My thumbs moved just barely over her cheeks as my hands slid to the back of her neck.

   “It’s always been you.”  Her words were just whispers, but they sounded hopeful and shameful at the same time.  I brought her shivering frame closer to me, my forehead resting against hers.  And the most wonderful part of it was that she let me.  She came, willingly, into my arms, wrapping her own around my waist.  “Hayes,” she said, just a breath, before I felt her lips press against mine.

   She was kissing me. 
She
was kissing
me
.  And I only let my brain ponder that magnificent fact for a nanosecond before I started kissing her back.  I’d relived our kiss from two years ago daily in my mind, thought about it many times, always with mixed emotions.  Some days I was glad I’d taken what I thought was my one and only shot at kissing McKenzie.  Other days I was absolutely overflowing with guilt for kissing my brother’s girlfriend.  Most days though, most days, I was absolutely broken that it would never happen again.

   And here she was, putting me back together again with her lips.

   She kissed me slowly, tentatively, as if she were afraid I was going to stop her. 

   My fingers threaded through her hair, now drenched from the rain, and I gripped it, making sure she had nowhere to go but to me.  Her lips were soft but cold, moving over mine as if I were fragile.  I stepped into her farther, even though we were clinging to each other with no room between us, but pushing her back made her unsteady and forced her to hold on to me tighter.

   I passed my tongue over the seam of her lips, hoping she’d give me the permission I sought.  When her lips parted and a tiny sigh escaped her, I was done handling her gently.

   My tongue swept over hers, licking her, tasting her, and a growl rumbled through my chest with the feeling of finally getting that part of her back.  As I kissed her, my lips moving over hers, her lips responding with so much heat and need, I was aware of her body.  Aware of the way she slowly softened against me, losing all the stiffness she’d held on to just moments before.  Her hands gripped my shirt at my back, and when her fingers twisted in the material, she pressed herself against me even more.  She was holding on to me because she had to; I had her at a disadvantage.  But she was also clinging to me because she wanted to, I could tell.  She told me in the way her lips sought mine out.  If I moved left, she went with me, followed me.  When I took her bottom lip between my teeth, sucking on it, she let me and her shuddering breaths told me she never wanted me to stop.

   When our lips finally separated, it was only because we needed air, both of us panting to pull in as much as we could.

   “Kenzie,” I said between dragging breaths, “I won’t let you go.  I can’t walk away and pretend this didn’t happen.  It’ll kill me if I do it again.”

   “I wish you’d never walked away the first time.”  Her eyes were so clear, her expression, for the first time in weeks, relaxed and sincere. 

   “What is this?” I asked on a breath, unsure if I wasn’t having some sort of hallucination, my hands back at the sides of her face, examining everything about her in that moment because I never wanted to forget what she looked like the instant I felt my life click into place.