But I’m here and so is she and I can’t let go. Maybe I don’t need to save her forever. Maybe I can just save her right now, in this moment, and if I can do that, maybe it will save me and maybe that can be enough. I tighten my arms as if I can still the shaking with that alone. The crying has turned silent. Her face is buried against my chest. I’m watching the light reflect off her hair on top of her head and I focus on that, because I can’t look around me and see all of those faces asking me for answers I don’t have.
Gradually, she calms. Her breathing slows and her body settles into mine and it steadies. Then I feel her take her own weight back, for just a moment, before she pulls away from me.
I loosen my arms and let her go, but my eyes stay on her. Her face goes blank, the way it was the first time I saw her and I see every emotion being put away. It’s like watching a video of an explosion played backwards, every piece of debris being sucked back into place, like nothing ever happened.
I’m afraid to look away. Afraid she’ll fall apart again. Afraid she’ll disappear. Afraid. I never should have left my garage. I never should have let her in it.
Then she sees the pile of notebooks on the table and everything about her goes still. Her eyes won’t leave them. They are a question and an answer all at once.
“How?” her mother asks, finally. Confused. Betrayed. Relieved. “You didn’t remember.”
I look at the faces of the people who love her, who haven’t heard her voice in nearly two years. No one expects a response. But they get one.
“I remember everything,” she whispers, and it’s a confession and a curse.
The only other noise in the room is the sharp intake of her mother’s breath at the sound of Sunshine’s voice.
“Since when?” her father asks.
She pulls her eyes away from the notebooks to face him when she answers.
“Since the day I stopped talking.”
Somehow, everyone eventually sleeps; scattered across the house on beds and floors and sofas. I end up on the twin bed in Sunshine’s room, with her body curled up against mine, and I don’t care how small the bed is, because she will never be close enough.
No one made any attempt to stop me when I climbed in with her. I think they all knew they couldn’t prevent it. There was nothing in this house or on this earth that was going to keep me from being next to her.
Drew is on a makeshift bed on the floor because I don’t think he wanted to be far away from her, either.
I listen to her breathing; the soft intake of air reminding me that she’s here, her body pressed against mine, the way we’ve slept so many nights that I’ve lost count.
Sometime during the night, her mother comes in and looks at us on the bed together. Her expression is one of acceptance, if not understanding.
“What did you call her?” she asks, but I don’t think it’s her real question.
“Sunshine,” I say, and she smiles like she believes it’s perfect and she may be the only person other than me who would think so.
“What is she to you?” she whispers. The real question and I know the answer even if don’t know how to say it.
Drew’s muffled voice rises up from the floor before I can respond.
“Family,” he says.
And he’s right.
CHAPTER 55
Emilia
My parents leave the next morning for the news conference, and Asher goes to school, even though they told him he could skip today.
I walk Drew to his car and I think I could hug him forever.
“I’ll miss my Nastypants,” he tells me.
“There will never come a day when I won’t be your Nastypants.” I smile and let go. “Tell Tierney to give you another chance. If you screw up this time, I’ll take you down myself.”
And then he’s gone; and it’s just me and Josh Bennett and all of the unasked questions.
I hand him one of the notebooks because it’s the only way he’ll know, and he looks at it like it’s a viper.
“I don’t ever want to know what’s in those books,” he says, and he won’t take it out of my hands.
I tell him that I don’t want to know what’s in them either. But I do know and I need him to know too. So he reads it and his face tenses along with every other muscle in his body and I can tell he’s trying not to cry. And when I show him the pictures, he shoves his fist against his mouth and I think he wants to hit something, but there’s nothing here to hit. When he gets to the one of my hand, the one with the bones coming through the skin in so many places it’s hard to believe they ever put it back together again, he throws up. And I don’t blame him.
I show him videos of me playing the piano and photo albums full of pictures and introduce him to the me he never met; but we don’t say very much.
“You were really good,” he says, his voice faint as it breaks the silence.
“I was f**king amazing,” I try to joke, but it just comes out sad.
“You still are,” he responds with quiet conviction, piercing me with his eyes the way he does when he wants to make sure I’m listening. “Every way that matters.”
The silence returns and we sit on the couch, photo albums on our laps, staring at the wasted piano in the corner.
“I wish I could have saved you,” he says, finally. And this is what it always comes back to. Salvation. Him saving me. Me saving him. Impossibilities, because there is no such thing, and it’s not what we ever needed from each other anyway.
“That’s stupid,” I echo his words from my birthday. “Because it’s an impossible wish.” I pick up his hand and he laces his fingers through mine, holding on tighter than he needs to. “You couldn’t have saved me,” I tell him. “You didn’t even know me.”
“I would have liked to.”
“Mrs. Leighton told me you needed to be saved, too. But I can’t do that either,” I confess, and he looks at me skeptically because I never did tell him about that conversation. “I don’t want you to save me and I can’t save you,” I say, because I need him to hear me say it, but also because I need to hear me say it.
He closes the photo album and lays it down on the coffee table and cringes, because I’ve found that’s what he does every time he looks at that coffee table. And then he turns and puts his hands on either side of my face and kisses me with a reverence I may never understand. And maybe I’m a liar and I do need it, because being kissed by Josh Bennett is kind of like being saved. It’s a promise and a memory of the future and a book of better stories.
When he stops, I’m still here, and he’s still looking at me like he can’t believe I am, and I want to keep that look forever.
“Emilia,” he says, and when he does, it warms me to my soul. “Every day you save me.”
CHAPTER 56
Josh
I say goodbye to her in her driveway two days after I got here. Two days after I learned the truth. Two days after I got her back. Two days to wrap my mind around losing her again.
I was planning on leaving tomorrow, but I know I have to leave today.
We’re both leaning against the side of my truck, looking at the ground like it holds the secrets of the universe. Her hand is in a fist and she’s tracing circles again with her foot and I hate it because it reminds me of things I don’t want to think about.
She told her parents that she was considering coming back with me, and they didn’t like it, but they know her well enough to realize that telling her not to wouldn’t accomplish much. And yet that’s what I’m planning to do.
I take both of her hands and pull her in front of me because I want to face her when I say everything I have to say. And maybe it’s a mistake, because when I look at her now, I think, for just one second, that God doesn’t hate me so much after all. But then I look again and all I can see is the goodbye all around us and I need to touch her one more time. If there has to be a last time I kiss her, I want to know that it’s the last time. I trace the line of the scar by her hair. I don’t know who moves first, but her lips are on mine and my hands are in her hair and we kiss each other with the regret and desperation of so many days I can’t count them. Her body is crushed against mine and I hold her there so tightly it’s as if I’m trying to absorb her through sheer force of will.
But I can’t; and when we stop, I rest my forehead against hers and start to say goodbye.
I know that if I don’t talk now, I may never talk, and I’ll just stay here until tomorrow and let her convince herself to come with me. And I’ll convince myself that it’s okay.
“I’m leaving today,” I tell her and I wait.
“Do you want me to go with you?” she asks so softly it’s like she doesn’t want me to hear it.
“Yes.” It’s honest, even if it goes against everything I’m going to say to her next. “But you shouldn’t.”
She nods like she’s thought about it, too, and she knows it’s true. But, like me, I don’t think she wants to admit it.
She made me look at those pictures and read those books and now I know everything that she knows. But I don’t know how to help her. I don’t understand how she lived with that in her head every day and still held onto any thread of sanity.
“You should stay here and try to, I don’t know, get better. Get better sounds stupid.” It does sound stupid, but I don’t know what won’t sound stupid. Get well? Heal? Fix things? It’s like she has a broken leg. Or she’s a handyman. And I’m a shit for thinking it, but there’s a part of me that knows that when she does get well, heal, fix things, she may not want me anymore. She may be so changed that we won’t even know each other, if we ever did. And when that goodbye comes, it won’t be temporary.
If none of this had ever happened, she would be still be here in Brighton where she belongs – the beautiful, talented, unattainable girl. And I’m a bastard, because I know the truth of her now, but I don’t know how to regret it. Because to regret it would mean to regret that I ever met her and I can’t make myself do that.
Part of us has always known that we were together because we were damaged. We had that life experience bond that neither of us ever wanted. And maybe when she’s not so damaged anymore, I won’t be enough for her. Maybe she’ll want someone whose life isn’t as tragic as hers. And that won’t be me.
When I think about it, I want to rewind and go back to where I just said yes and leave it there. Yes, come with me. We’ll play house and bake cookies and build chairs and life will be perfect. But I’ve started now; I’m in this and I can finish it.
“I’m going to say this and it probably won’t sound good or eloquent or whatever and I’m probably going to ramble, but just let me say it, okay? Will you listen?”
Her eyes are soft on me. Her lips just barely turn up.
“You’ve listened to every word I’ve ever said. Even the ones I didn’t say. I’ll listen to anything, Josh.” It’s like a razor that slices through whatever is left holding me, and I just go.
“Maybe one day you’ll come back. Maybe you never will and that’ll suck, but you can’t keep doing this. The blame and the self-loathing and the bullshit. I can’t watch that. It makes me hate you for hating yourself. I don’t want to lose you. But I’d rather lose you if it means you’ll be happy. I think if you come back with me today, you’ll never be okay. And I’ll never be okay if you aren’t. I need to know that there’s a way for people like us to end up okay. I need to know that there even is such a thing as okay, or maybe not just okay, maybe even good, and it’s out there and we just haven’t found it yet. There’s got to be a happier ending than this, here. There’s got to be a better story. Because we deserve one. You deserve one. Even if it doesn’t end with you coming back to me.”