Sail (Wake #2) (2 page)

Friday, January 1, 2010

I DIDN’T REST THAT night. Sleep came and went. So, early to rise it was for me on New Year’s Day.

As I studied the letter she gave me that was written on a hotel notepad, my mind raced with what happened. I read the words over and over. That tormenting fucking piece of paper. Why had she never mailed it to me? Or better yet, said the words out loud to me? She’d come to me after my mother died and never once told me these things—at least not in so many words.

But did I know them anyway?

It was clear to me she loved me, but simply saying words can’t always prove it. Words can be erased or unspoken. Our love never was. Months and years apart didn’t fade our love, and all of the things that should’ve been said, we were never fucking brave enough to, but we’d still heard them in our hearts.

The more I read it, the more power it gave me.

She was still fighting.

I’d fight too. But differently than I had before. I’d be what she wanted—what she was never able to ask of me. I’d be the dependable man she desired. I’d be the stability she craved. I was ready for that. I was ready for whatever it took to have her.

Fuck, if she told me to be a tree, I would’ve figured out a way to sprout limbs and branches. I’d find a way. I’d be the motherfucking tree of all the other trees if that was what she needed.

I was responsible, not that I’d ever made a point to prove it to her until now. If she was looking for stability, I had full control of my work schedule. I could balance travel and home however I needed to. I was ready for those changes. She wanted a man, and I’d only shown her a boy.

The coffee maker beeped, and I realized I’d been standing there the whole time, watching it fill.

My house didn’t feel like a home, not like it had when my mother was alive. Or how it did again while Blake had been here. The sun didn’t warm the floors like it had last October. Cooked food didn’t linger in the air.

Instead, it felt stale; it even smelled stale. Only glasses, from those select few times I actually took the time to pour my poison of choice into them, filled the sink.

My house wasn’t a particularly great place to come back to—not in the state it was. It wasn’t somewhere to seek refuge. And by the grace of fucking God himself, if she came back to me, I wanted her to have a warm place to run.

I poured a cup of black coffee and sat at the bar making a mental list.

There were many crimes that I committed against us, too. I couldn’t continue blaming only her. I had made my lion’s share of mistakes as well. Never telling her how I felt. Never asking her what she wanted from me. Fucking Aly.

I’m not sure how she knew about that, but I guessed a little birdie told her. A hell-bent, blonde birdie. The same fucking birdie I paraded around in front of her to intentionally make her jealous. I didn’t think Aly would tell her, but maybe, in the back of my mind, I was glad she did.

I didn’t find any pleasure in hurting Blake. Love. Hurts. If we measured our love by the pain we felt, we’d be certified masters in the art. I only hoped that made us stronger.

Another cup of coffee and another thousand missed opportunities to tell her I’d give her anything, all slipped through my fingers.

But the more I thought about the words, the more I felt like a hypocrite.

Words. Words. Words.

It wasn’t the words that ever created results. It was our actions that paved the way through this. It would be my actions that would prove to her she could have everything she wanted.
From me.

I wanted to be the man who provided for her. To build her world around. To rely on. Me.

My cell rang. I prayed it was her.

That prayer went unanswered, but my phone didn’t.

“Hey,” I said to Troy when I picked up the call, hitting the speakerphone button and letting my cell sit on the counter.

“Dude, what the fuck happened last night? Where’d you go?”

I ran my hand through my hair and leaned against my palm. I ran my thumb around the rim of my coffee.

“What didn’t happen?”

“Well, you held your fucking own. That’s for sure. I would have beaten the shit out of that drunk bastard. I still can’t believe she brought him. I guess that was one way to break it to him,” he scoffs, chuckling awkwardly. “Man, she’s heartless, isn’t she? Good for you for leaving her there. I bet she got the fucking message. You’re with Aly. Speaking of Aly, she got pretty torn up after you left. I think Nick had to take her home. But hell, I was pretty tanked too, so I’m not really sure.”

Heartless?

“Watch your fucking mouth, dude. You have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not
with
Aly. God. Is that what everyone thinks?”

“Well, you sure did make a show of being there
with
her.”

“That’s what it was. A fucking show.” Trying to make Blake jealous, I’d flaunted Aly in front of her like a trophy. It was wrong, but I was fucking desperate. At the time, bringing her felt like a sure-fire way to make it clear to Blake how I felt seeing her with
him.

Still, I hadn’t thought about what it would look like to outsiders. To my family. To Aly. To anyone else. My judgment was clouded; my focus firmly set on one purpose: Blake and making her crack. I wanted her jealous. I wanted Grant to witness it. I wanted everyone to see her falter. But she was strong and acted like nothing was wrong. I knew her too well. I could see all of the emotions I was trying to force her to admit in her eyes. She only showed them to me—and in the end to Grant, too.

I don’t know what happened between them after I left, only that he went back to their room, got his shit and left. When she left Hook, Line and Sinker, I watched from the car. I wanted her to come to me and tell me it was over between them. And in a way she had, but that didn’t mean it was all buttoned up and in the past. It was far from that.

Still, he knew. Then, she followed him after being with me in the car. I could still smell her on myself in my kitchen afterward. I could still feel her mouth on my neck, hear her breath in my ear.

“So what?” Troy asked, not following what had actually happened.

“So I took Aly to make Blake jealous, and it worked. I didn’t expect Grant to get drunk like he had. I didn’t think Aly would talk to Blake. And I sure as fuck didn’t think twice about
Aly
after I left.”

“Yeah, that was kind of a dick move. What were you thinking?” he said, sounding annoyed.

“I don’t know. I was tired of waiting for her. I just thought if I put enough pressure on Blake she’d finally make a move. She’d tell him.” I pulled at my hair and I scratched the top of my head. “You know what? It doesn’t matter now.”

“Oh, it doesn’t?” Troy was my friend, like a second brother, but he wasn’t one to sugarcoat things. “So let me get this straight. You fucked Aly the other night and brought her to your brother’s wedding just to get a rise out of some married chick? Fuck, Casey. Can’t you see how messed up that is?”

“Yes! I see that, but I didn’t know what to do. Yeah, I fucked Aly, but it wasn’t like I went after her. Did she tell you that? Did she tell you she came to
my
house Christmas Eve when I was already fucking trashed? She walked right-fucking-in, Troy. So don’t spout off like she’s so fucking innocent. If it wasn’t for her nosy fucking ass, Blake wouldn’t even
be
married.” Which was only about half true, but that was just semantics. “Don’t judge me, you fucking prick. You. Have. No. Clue.”

It was silent on the line and by that time, I had both hands in my hair as I was talking—or shouting—down at my phone on the bar. It was easy for him to criticize what was going on from the outside, but he didn’t know. It wasn’t fair for me to get pissed at him for trying to set me straight either. He was only trying to look out for a friend—me. He just didn’t know everything like he thought he did.

“You only know part of it, dude. So just shut down the sermon, okay?” I said, leveling my tone.

“It must be really fucking lonely in that head of yours,” he said, also taking it down a notch.

“I have just as much blame in this as anyone. And don’t call Blake heartless.”

“Listen, it’s going to be a nice day. Let’s take a bike ride and you can get some of this shit off your chest. I’m your friend, man. If you want me to quit thinking the worst about this whole thing, then you need to tell me what the hell is going on.”

A ride sounded perfect. He was right. I needed to say it all out loud. Lay it out. Own my shit.

And I’d start with him.

My calves burned and the cool January air cleansed my lungs.

Troy and I rode—in almost complete silence—for about two hours before we stopped at a roadside park, up on one of my favorite bluffs.

I used my kickstand while Troy let his bike fall over. Some things never changed. He’d done that since we were kids, and it made me laugh every time he’d hop off, letting his bike fall over.

“You know you wouldn’t have to buy new bikes all the time if you’d take better care of them,” I commented, as I sat on the bench facing the bay. It was still foggy and the water was hardly visible.

As I took a swig of the water I’d brought, he snapped the sweatband I was wearing, repositioning it over my eyes. Then, climbing up on the bench next to me, he sat on the steel back, resting his feet on the seat.

I pulled the band off my eyes and pushed my hair back with it.

Troy grew up only a few blocks away from me and my family, but he didn’t have the same kind of home life we did. I remembered his dad from back in the day, and as the years passed, he began to look more and more like him. Shoulder-length, stringy-blond hair, a lazy beard, and bloodshot eyes. Half-hearted tattoos.

Troy’s dad was a musician and had lived a hard life. On the road with bands frequently, he took jobs as a roadie or a guitar tech when there was an opening and a free bunk on the bus. His mother was just as rough as his old man. His parents divorced around the same time as mine did.

Most weekends he’d stay at our house from the time school got out Friday until we went back Monday morning.

True to his family’s nature, he worked jobs for cash. He’d pick up a few shifts here and there at Tinnitus Music, where Cory worked, when they needed help, but mostly he’d tend bar or work the door at music venues. He’d play a show here or there when a band needed a fill in, but he didn’t play regular shows with just one band.

After we’d sat there longer than his fly-by-night patience allowed, he stole the water bottle from my hands, finished it off, and tossed it toward the nearby trash can. He missed, but instead of picking it up, he tipped his chin up at me. “Start talking, man.”

“Where the fuck do I start?” I asked, leaning my head back against the metal surface.

“Start where it started.”

Where it started? If I could go back to where it started and do it all differently, I would’ve. But I didn’t have a time machine. Where was Doc with a DeLorean and a clock tower when you needed him?

I began with, “She looked like a drowned cat,” and just kept going from there. I told him about that first weekend. Then, about how I looked her up after she started the job with Couture Dining. Aly, Chicago, and how I’d set it up for us to meet in Atlanta.

He listened to me go on and on about city after city, revisiting each chance I had—and missed—at telling her how I felt and what I really wanted. How we talked almost every day, but never really said much. I told him about her wedding, and what happened when she came to me after my mom died.

I told him everything I could remember, and as I listened to myself rehash the past few years, I cringed with every fuck up.

Another few hours passed and we shared a bag of sunflower seeds, taking turns spitting the shells on the ground. He ran across the highway to the park bathrooms and brought back two more bottles of water.

It wasn’t like us to have deep conversations about that kind of shit. Every time I thought it was getting too weird or I felt like I was acting like a silly girl, he’d punch my shoulder and urge me to keep going.

By the time I reached the part where she gave me the letter, he’d called me a fucking idiot under his breath ten or two hundred times. As much as I knew the release was cathartic, remembering how
good
we were together brought an achingly familiar pain to my chest. I fucking missed her. And after all the shit we’d been through, I knew it was all worth it.

“What are you going to do now?” he asked, when the story butted against present tense, his knee bobbing up and down. I think I was stressing him out. I knew the feeling.

“I’m not sure. What do you think?” He knew everything and I could finally get some sort of outsider’s take on it all. A weight had been lifted. I looked at the water that was not plainly visible and wondered what she was doing, pushing my foot through the dirt over and over until I made a rut.

“I think you have to trust her,” he admitted, throwing his hands in the air.

“Trust her?”

“Sounds fucked, huh?” He chuckled and hopped up, stretching his back with his arms in the air.

“No. I do trust her, I’m just sick of fucking waiting.”