Summary: Bianca, trapped in the dark after a terrible tragedy, seeks solace in the return of Nolan, the capricious light of her past.
Author's Note: This is the first post on this journal. I created this blog strictly for putting my fiction out there.
I'd like to thank
Courtney. She was my beta and she did a fabulous job tying up some of my loose ends.
Soundtrack: Music is a big inspiration when I write. So I thought with each post that I make I would include a few of the songs I think go well with the piece. Maybe you could listen to them while you read. Or maybe not. Either way.
Kevin Devine - Fever MoonBrand New - Jesus ChristRilo Kiley - Rest of My LifeThe Early November - Come Back Hurricane season started early this year. I don't really understand how weather works or what causes it, but I know about hurricanes. I know that they bring lots of rain and wind and destruction. I've seen the pictures from other counties in the state. We're lucky. That's what my seventh grade science teacher said. He said "You're lucky that a hurricane has never swept through while you kids have been around." All the adults talk about that one time that the town was destroyed, but they rallied and rebuilt the city. This year they say that the tropical storm Andrea was the first named hurricane of the season but they obviously missed the arrival of Hurricane Nolan. The devastation that comes along with him can make weathermen tremble.
Nolan Fischer left town four years ago after his father and mother died. Everyone in the small town knows the story by heart. It was nothing but scandal. The talk died down eventually and I almost forgot all about Nolan Fischer and my childhood love for him. I suppressed the memories of the night I never wanted to have. The gossips of the town stopped making up rumors about how exactly it went down and I stopped counting the days until Nolan's next phone call. Things like murder and suicide keep the town occupied for a while but soon they find something else to obsess over and everyone disregards the loss of life that seemed so important. And one girl, who witnessed something terrible, pushed it to the farthest part of her; where it couldn’t hurt her. But it did hurt her. It tore apart her mind and made her live in moments of death and darkness.
When he left, Nolan was an outgoing fourteen year old boy with dark messy hair who had his life ripped apart. When he left, I was a flummoxed fourteen year old girl who had lost her best friend and her innocence. The last I saw Nolan; he was smiling grimly and waving at me from the front seat of his grandmother's car. I remember missing him even then. I remember running to my room and wondering who I would tell my secrets to. That seemed to bother me the most; that I didn't have a confidante anymore. I wouldn’t have him there. Nolan Fischer was the only person who knew everything about me. He would always be the only person for me. And I'd nearly forgotten that by the time he arrived in town again.
Nolan returned to town to finish his senior year in high school because his grandmother, his legal guardian, died. For Nolan, tragedy was like a cold: common and irritating but nothing new. They brought him back to town to live with his Aunt Loraine, his mother's sister. She was a spinster and not very friendly but she was all the family Nolan had left. No one expected Nolan to come crashing into our high school and most people had no idea who he was. But I knew. I knew the moment I saw him pulling into the parking lot. Not that I could say anything. I was just as dazed as everyone else by his sudden presence and I couldn't speak. Not to him. Not to anyone. I saw Nolan and knew that I could not hide my memories for much longer. From then on out, nothing could be the same. Nolan, the only person who really knew me and really knew what happened that night, was back.
"Bianca?" I looked up from my notebook paper. And Mrs. Young caught my eyes as she took attendance. I didn't have to tell her I was there because she saw me. My mind was fixated on one thought and words would have destroyed it. Nolan Fischer was in the school. He was there and I wanted to see him. I knew it was him. Never had an obsession come on me like this one. On my notebook paper only one thing was written. In clear bold letters, I wrote his name. Nolan. No one paid attention to me as I stared at the word. Nolan. I had no idea why he was there but I was determined to find him and speak with him. Nolan.
I saw him the second time that day in my next class. He was seated in the far corner with a doomed expression on his face. I hid behind my hair and hoped he didn't see me immediately. I needed to think. I needed to take him in. He looked like his father. Nolan was tall with the same almost black hair he'd always had but there was the dark circled eyes to remind me of his sinister father. He drummed his fingers against the desk rhythmically and each tap thundered in my ears but no one else's. I couldn't pay attention to the teacher, to the lecture. I stole glances every minute until the very end of the class. I tried to rush out of the room unnoticed but I should have known that if I knew Nolan and no one else did, he would know me. He would know my blonde hair and my hurried walk. He would know my blue eyes and my laugh. He would remember all of this but would he care?
"Hey… you." I heard a hoarse voice behind me. It sounded as though they hadn't spoken in days. The guttural sound made me cringe. It was disheartening but familiar. "Bianca Delaney." This time, the voice was smoother and genuine. Nolan. I turned slowly knowing the impending horror it would bring. Instead of smug and flat, Nolan's expression mirrored my own. Pure dismay and anxiety clung to every inch of him. He'd caught up with me now and I stood still, staring up at him. "It's you." I fought against my limbs to stop them from hurling themselves around his body. I wanted to know everything he was thinking. I wanted to crawl inside his head and stay awhile. But I just gawked with awkward blue eyes. And then he turned and left. Without warning or hesitation, he walked the other way. But it was too late; he'd already left his mark. The wind was already blowing up a storm that no one expected.
“Oh my god, Bianca.” Andrea started most sentences with the phrase ‘oh my god’ so it didn’t faze me immediately. I looked up from my lunch as she approached the table. Her face showed me that she meant business. She meant to tell me the news that had her so flustered. Andrea was a determined but slightly obnoxious girl. My friendship with her was as old as my one with Nolan Fischer had been. We all grew up in the same neighborhood. It was a place that had been quiet until the mayhem and gore of the Fischer incident; that was almost forgotten until now. “Bianca, listen.” She sat her tray across from mine and next to Mary’s. Her news was directed specifically at me but Mary and Jill were both staring at Andrea, waiting for the news more eagerly than I.
“Okay, I’m listening.” My eyes went back down to my browning salad. I was still in a hell of a mood and I didn’t quite put two and two together to figure out what exactly Andrea was talking about.
“Nolan Fischer is back.” With her eyebrows raised and her lips pursed, I knew she wanted a reaction from me but my emotions were at a standstill. I’d already been flabbergasted by Nolan this day and now the shock was wearing down, only to be replaced by a jumble of conflicting feelings. I was torn between an overwhelming urge to be with him every moment and the desperate desire to never see him again. “Bianca, did you hear me? Nolan is in my Spanish class.” I finally looked up at her face. She wore a scandalized expression that I didn’t care for. “You know, your next door neighbor Nolan?”
“Yes, I know. I saw him earlier. In Calculus.” I took a sip of my orange juice. I avoided contact with Andrea’s eyes. Although she was often quite unperceptive, I worried she would see the fleeting nervousness on my face. She would catch on to the anxiousness that left me feeling debilitated.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Aren’t you… surprised?”
Surprised wasn’t the word.
I don’t remember exact details about how we met or when; I just know that he’d almost always been my friend. He lived next door with his mother, father and two older brothers. By the time that his father murdered his mother, both brothers were over eighteen years old and didn’t have to be passed through the family. Nolan looked a lot like his older brothers, who both were exact replicas of their father. Growing up he was gangly and slightly awkward. I adored him.
There’s a time when girls stop looking at boys with only friendly eyes. This happens as a result of hormones. It took longer for my eyes to adjust to this change when it came to Nolan. It wasn’t until we were thirteen that one day I glanced at him and was suddenly very aware of his red lips. I was hyper-conscious of the way his messy hair hung just around his eyes perfectly. And his eyes now smoldered and pierced. Nolan kissed me before I’d even known I wanted to kiss him. I was still perplexed over my sudden awareness of him. What was I supposed to think when I realized my oldest friend was my newest crush? And what was I to do when he pressed his flushing mouth to mine? Nolan became the first boy to ever make my chest tighten upon seeing him. It would take two years after his departure for me to even glance towards anyone else. But time only clouds the first love feeling and even rain, heavy monsoons of rain, doesn’t wash it away. Only now that the clouds had been cleared by his prodigal return, my adoration of him burned strong.
My mind obsessed over all of these girlish memories as I sat in my afternoon classes. I hadn’t expected anything like this. It was so devastating to me. I’d spent four years hiding all the things that happened that I wasn’t sure what to do when it was exposed. In my second to last class of the day, the one thing I’d tried to forget the hardest hit me.
A woman screamed. We would realize soon enough that it was Lyn Fischer, his mother. These screams would be her very last vocalizations. They would be the final things we ever heard from her. These dire cries were her pleas for help. They went unanswered.
“Don’t listen to it, Nolan.” I held onto his arm as we sat on his bed. The fighting had started an hour earlier. We’d been hiding in his room, holed up together and trying to ignore them. Nolan only grimaced and grunted. Lyn screamed again. This time, it was fraught with agony. Something was terribly wrong. I couldn’t place her scream. I’d never heard such a thing. It was horrifying. I’d heard his parents fight before, but this was different. He began to stand, but I held onto his arm tighter and he remained seated. “No, please don’t go down there.” He stayed. She let out one finally scream before it faded into a low throaty moan. The sound of a woman dying.
A sudden commotion started. Banging and clanking. Dishes being thrown and furniture tossed. Nolan pulled himself quickly from my grasp and fled towards the door. For one awful moment, I feared that he was going to go downstairs. But instead, he only went to the door and locked it. He hesitated for a moment as if he thought it was a mistake to lock it. He turned back to me. His face was remarkably calm. Maybe he didn’t have the same dreadful feeling in his stomach as I did. There was the sound of stomping feet up the stairs and in an instant, Nolan was beside me again, trembling. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know what came next.
“Nolan!” It was his father, Daniel. There was pounding on the door and rattling of the doorknob. I was convinced that he was about to break it down. In the moment that Nolan’s deranged father thumped on the bedroom door, I couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. And then he stopped. I heard him walking patiently away from the door and trotting down the steps. The front door slammed and I breathed once more. I didn’t know it then, but Daniel was leaving to go find a place to die. A place to stick a .45 in his mouth.
Nolan pushed himself further up onto the bed and laid back. He closed his eyes. There was nothing I could say. There was nothing I could do. So I pulled myself next to him and closed my eyes too.
When I opened them again, it was dark. It’d been midday when the epic battle between the Fischers had occurred. Nolan was asleep. The thought of waking him and having those awkward moments deterred me from rousing him. I couldn’t bear to hear him explain one more time that his parents rarely fought; that this was nothing but a mistake. We both knew these were lies. We both knew the truth. My lips were so dry that they cracked when I opened my mouth. I needed water. I peered out Nolan’s bedroom window; the car was gone. His frightening father had left. I figured I would be safe to go get a drink. Perhaps I would see his mother, black and blue but smiling at me anyway; as I had seen her do many times. But as I crept down the stairs, there was an eerie stillness that made me think she wasn’t there at all. The television echoed through the rooms. It was abandoned hours ago, before the fight. As I slithered around the corner to the kitchen, the reality of the situation set in.
“Bianca, are you feeling okay? You look pale.” My ninth period teacher had noticed that I was not in the right state of mind to be anywhere near people. She could not possibly guess what I was thinking of. She couldn’t fathom the thoughts that made me so ill.
“No, I don’t think I feel very well at all. Would it be alright if I went to the nurse?” My slow lethargic words tried to remain steady but faltered. My eyes couldn’t focus on her while she nodded and began to fill out a hall pass. Dizziness swept over me as I scooped my books into my arms. The familiarity of this feeling was not lost to me. I’d been in this place before.
The school nurse and I were on first name basis. The nurse, Jody, was familiar with my episodes of remembrance. In fact, Jody was the first person to notice my sickness; the first to give it a name. I walked into the nearly abandoned office and I scanned the room. The secretary that normally manned the front desk had an affinity for asking questions I didn’t want to answer. But lucky for me the evil secretary was nowhere to be seen. Only Jody was in the office and she gave me sympathetic eyes and a nod of recognition as I made my way to the corner of the office where the faux leather couch was. I lay down, sitting my stack of textbooks and paper on the ground beside me. How was I supposed to stop my mind from thinking?
Lyn Fischer was a beautiful woman; dark red hair and light complexion. But she was paler at that moment than I had ever seen her and as still and lifeless as could be. From her position on the floor, sprawled, she looked like unreal, like a doll or a painting. I could not grasp what exactly the stain was and I did not try. This warped picture confused me. I was as inert as Nolan’s stunning mother. Still; frozen in a horrific scene.
It was moments or hours before I heard the creaking of the stairs. Nolan. My mind jump started. He couldn’t be a part of this. This was not what he needed. In my head, the only thing that was steady was my demanding: ‘Not Nolan’. I quickly turned on my toes and ran directly into his body, long and thin. He was just a kid. We were just kids. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
“I’m here to get a parking pass.” A voice broke into my thoughts. It was his voice. I cracked my eyes to make sure and then I didn’t open my eyes again. I was still on the smooth black sofa of the school’s office, feigning sleep. “Is she okay?” The attention I didn’t want was drawn to me.
“She’s feeling a little under the weather.” Jody didn’t give away any details.
“Shouldn’t she go home now? I mean, now that school’s over.”
“I thought I’d let her sleep until I have to leave and take her home when I go.” Jody was a sweet woman. Bless her but how could she not recognize Nolan? I thought everyone in town knew of him. It buzzed through my head that no one was as aware of him as I was. No one could ever come close to knowing him the way I did.
“She lives just down the street from me. I could take her. We’re friends.” Nolan spoke with a strange urgency; like he needed this to happen. He wanted the time alone with me. I couldn’t understand. I loathed Jody’s naivety. She was going to believe him. She quickly went from hero to villain in my book. I was angry but not enough to protest. Maybe I wanted to go with him more than I could admit.
“Nolan.” My desert tongue stuck to the insides of my mouth as I tried to stop him. But I heard him choke on air. He saw it; just as I had. The serene setting before him stalled his body; his breath. But only for a strangled second. His eyes found my own. His affectionate brown eyes, liquid warmth, were unreadable. I didn’t have answers to his questions. Nor did he have the answers to mine. “What do we do?” He took my hand; it was clammy and it fused to his skin. In a hurry, we left the house. We were in my yard within seconds and panting in the front room of my house in a minute. I noticed then that my cheeks were wet and my eyes stung. Nolan clung to me suddenly. This intensity should be reserved for adults. Two children should not have this complexity thrown at them.
My mother appeared from nowhere specific. Before that moment, in the midst of my young teen angst, I’d resented her. I’d been angry at her for leaving me fatherless. But in that instant, I’d never been more relieved to see her there, alive and well. “What’s wrong?” She questioned calmly, unaware of the horror that waited just next door. Where could we begin? It seemed impossible to say anything. So we didn’t. We stood there silent; Nolan gripping me and my tears creating a layer of liquid on my skin.
His car had two vanilla air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror and it sort of masked the smell of cigarettes, but only sort of. The interior was colder than outside. The radio was a low noise in my ears; I couldn’t make out the song. He was expressionless as though all of this affected him very little. And though I noticed his resemblance to his homicidal father, I still believed him to be gorgeous. In a dark, inexplicable way, he appealed to me.
“You’re sick?” He asked.
“Something like that.” I said no more than he needed to know. How would he react to my illness? This illness, that blacked out the present and replaced it with the past, involved him after all.
“Do you still live in the same house?”
“Yes.”
“With your mom?”
“And my step dad and brother.” I added.
“Your mom got married?”
“And had a baby.” I added also.
“Oh.” I knew what he was feeling; like he’d missed important things. I felt strangely satisfied knowing that I could tell what he was thinking even after four years. And my mood was lighter suddenly. The initial shock of his return and the near catatonia it brought with it was over. I had accepted his presence; welcomed it even.
“How are your brothers?” We had been reduced to small talk. Talk of mundane things. The complex intensity was missing momentarily. But we knew that it was not gone. It remained; hanging like clouds above us.
Nolan and I waited. We waited with the patience of priests. Quietly, in my living room, we sat. The adults were in the dining room behind closed doors and I could just barely hear a hum of their voices, hushed and hurried. Their patience was being tested tonight also.
Nolan’s grandmother and my mother discussed the future, our futures. Behind those doors were the pitying voices that didn’t quite understand what had happened. Why it had happened.
“I’ll call you.” Nolan looked to me, tired eyes dropping low.
“You will?” I questioned sadly.
“Everyday if you want.”
“I’d like that.”
The phone calls did come daily at first. On schedule, for weeks, he called me at 8:30 in the evening. We talked, like we used to. I told him all the things that terrified me. The first time he didn’t call, I cried. And when he called the next day, apologizing and crying as well, I forgave him. Each time his calls were missed, I forgave it because I understood why he couldn’t call. I knew why it was hard. To call me was to keep the wound open and exposed. So when the calls ceased, just a few months after our separation, I tried to heal my own wound. I tried to forget. But when the calls ceased, the sickness came.
“Do you want to come in?” I asked him awkwardly stopping his eyes from staring at the house directly next to mine, his old home. No new family had moved in there. Everyone seemed to care about its horrific past. In the four years that had past, it remained empty. The ghosts were too much.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Nolan ran a hand through his hair in a reluctant motion.
“You know what…” I shook my head. “Nevermind. Maybe some other time.” I opened the door and put one foot on the ground outside. Strangely, I felt a great disappointment swelling inside my chest and I felt like I might cry. Something that hadn’t happened in years. Tears were oddly absent from my grieving. I decided that I needed out of the car quickly before I began to shed those long missing tears. Fumbling my books slightly, I climbed out and slammed the door. After doing all this and flying up my walkway, I thought I might have seemed harsh. Inside the house for a moment, I caught my breath and pushed back the urge to scream.
But before I could drive thoughts of him from me, a desperate knocking came from the front door. It was a familiar pounding that I couldn’t place. In agitation, I flung the door open back open. Nolan loomed there, nearly a foot taller than I. And his eyes exuded only painful remorse. He is dark and I saw a look on his face that I had felt on my own all day, shock. Just as I was floored by our reunion, he was also.
“Can I come in?” He did something unexpected then; he smiled. And I had seen nothing so beautiful in all my life. I stepped out of the way and he walked in. I wondered how all this looked to him. My house was once his second home; would he still feel that way? I couldn’t even think what had changed in four years because in my mind everything was the same. I felt the same. “Bianca…” His voice was a low throaty tone that would be sexy if it didn’t sort of scare me. I stared at him for a moment, confused as to why he decided to come in after all. “What could I say to you that would make all this easier?” His clear, serious words hurt as he spoke them. Every sound he made burned my flesh and I could almost smell the seared plastic scent of it. The whole world felt heavy and I was suddenly sharply aware that we were standing inches apart. I was leaning against the living room sofa and I was positive he could feel my ever-staggering breath on his neck.
“It can’t ever be easy for us, Nolan.” Not entirely sure where my words came from, my voice faltered. But I know that I am right in saying this. We are fraught with complications. In this difficult second, we were getting so near to one another that I was losing any rational thought that I had left.
“If it can’t be easy, then what can it be?” His hands slipped onto my waist and I imagined that the feeling of it is something I could have had incessantly if he’d never left. My cheek pressed against his shoulder and his rested against my hair. This moment, where we are, felt like where we’ve been for years: together, connected in some transient way and endlessly distant from the world. Like being locked in his bedroom that night, we are secluded in our own personal part of the universe.
Back on Earth, my mother was coming through the back door with my little brother Grant on her hip. Nolan and I were two beings again quicker than ever. The look in Mom’s eyes when she saw Nolan was frightening. She was terrified of what his return meant for me. Grant, oblivious as toddlers are, just smiled at me and I was grateful for his unconditional optimism. She stared at us, standing painfully close, and she sat Grant on the floor before fleeing up the stairs in a great hurry. I knew why this situation didn’t sit well with her. Nolan reminded her of all the reasons I couldn’t live a normal life ever again. In her eyes, he was indirectly the cause of my problems.
“What happened? What’s wrong with her?” I heard the clicking of high heel pumps on linoleum. “What happened?” More urgent this time, my mother’s voice commanded.
“Ms. Delaney…” Jody pleaded delicately.
“It’s Henderson now. I got married.” Mom corrected politely.
“Mrs. Henderson, she came in and just laid down. Didn’t say anything.” Jody was still as confused as the rest of us at this point in time. Mom’s confusion manifested itself as tears when I flicked my eyes open.
“Oh Bia, what’s wrong?” She was quickly by my side, holding onto me. I gazed down at her belly, just beginning to show signs of pregnancy. I smiled fondly at her. “Are you okay, baby?” I just nodded, unable to say anything.
“Bia… juice.” Grant grinned at me.
“Alright, take off your shoes and go sit down. You want me to put on cartoons?” He nodded enthusiastically and I moved towards the kitchen. Nolan followed coolly without question. The two of us stood as far from the other as the room allowed while I poured my brother a sippy cup full of apple juice.
“Who lives next door?” Nolan strayed back to the subject of that terrible place. I knew it wouldn’t have left his mind, but I had prayed otherwise. I wished that he could stop thinking of it as his childhood home and start thinking about it the way I did.
“No one.” I brushed past him on my way to Grant. I handed the tiny boy his drink and flipped the television on for him. Nolan stood in the kitchen doorway, looking more heartbreaking every instant. “Do you want to go over there?” The idea came to me suddenly and with a surge of daring. Nolan hesitated but I knew it wasn’t because he didn’t want to go. He only faltered for my sake. I imagine that he wondered if I’d be alright with such an adventure.
“Sure.” He shrugged as though it didn’t mean anything. I swished a hand through Grant’s dusty blonde hair fondly. His naivety is what I longed to have again. The house next door took it from me. Maybe if I went back, I’d find the things I lost.
We cross the lawn; a straight line from my backdoor to his. Millions of times before this, I walked this path to get to him. And now, I had him with me, walking shoulder to shoulder with little reluctance. I worried what we would find inside of there. I wanted to rush back to the safety of my home but Nolan easily jiggled the lock open as I’d seen all three of the Fischer brothers do for years as kids. Unlike in my house, his backdoor opens to a hallway instead of a kitchen. It was dim as we step inside with no windows to light our way. The eerie stillness of the last time I was here remained. Nolan moved slow momentarily before completely halting in from of me and turning.
“Why are we here, Bianca?” He said with a slight stammer. I shook my head. I am utterly clueless. This day had been beyond surreal. Like in a dream, I only followed along. As if on a string, I was unable to stop. I felt as though he wasn’t asking me why we were there so much as why all this happened to us. I ask myself the same.
“This was stupid.” I said to him as he stared. In this dark hallway, I cannot see past the shadows on his face. He is darkness without light. Again, he inched close to me and like in my house, his hands found my hips first. I placed my hands on his upper arms and I realized how cold my fingers were as I touched them to him. He radiated electric warmth; magnetic and enthralling. I liked this more than I thought was possible. “I’m sorry, Nolan.” I couldn’t understand what I was sorry for but I knew that I was. For every bad thing that would ever happen to him. For every minute I wasn’t allowed to spend with him while we were apart. For needing him more than I should.
“There are a lot of people that I wish I could have an apology from. People that have done awful things.” I knew immediately that he was speaking of his father and the atrocious things the man had done. Nolan pulled me into him so that our chests were touching. He bent his head down and his lips brushed against my cheek as he moved his mouth next to my ear. “But never for a minute… should you think that you are one of them.” When he moved to pull away, I caught his lips quickly and affectionately before letting go of his arms. I moved past him in embarrassment and pressed deeper into the house.
I stopped at the kitchen. It was unremarkable. There are no bloodstains or shattered plates as I witnessed four years ago. Part of me thought that it would all still be there. But I realized it was dumb to even consider it; they had tried to sell this place. This kitchen could have been anyone’s for how normal it looked. I stood there and this normalcy disturbed me. Nolan’s hand on the small of my back felt like a brick for all the pressure it puts on me. I closed my eyes briefly and got stuck inside my head.
I thought of Nolan’s mother Lyn and her beauty. Even as she lay dead on the kitchen floor, she was stunning. All the shades of red in the scene became her. Her rusty hair rested in sheets around her pale face that still blushed pink from the struggle that had left splashes of crimson around the room. I felt morbid thinking that this was something beautiful. But everything about it was perfect, still and strange. Nothing would ever stick with me the way this scene would. This woman, in her death, infinitely impacted my life. Nothing could ever compare to the magnitude of this moment. Except him.
“Bianca, please look at me.” Nolan was holding onto my shoulders and giving me eyes that were filled with vast concern. I’d been fleetingly lost again. He knew nothing of the disease that pulled me from reality and his first assumptions were that I was still in the present, simply ignoring him. I looked at him and again my eyes began to edge with tears. “Talk to me. Say something. Tell me that you hate me. Please. Anything.” His desperate voice pleaded with me.
“I couldn’t ever hate you,” were the only words that seemed appropriate.
He groaned and looked away from me but still keeping a hold of my arms. “Is it awful that I want you to hate me?” He bit at his bottom lip and I felt myself choking up. “I think that you should. I think that if it wasn’t for me; you’d be okay. I know you’re not okay. And that’s my fault. God. This is awful.” And though I felt vacant, hollow; I softened. I melted from his brilliant warmth. I put my cold hands onto his cheeks and stared. Cathartic tears finally made it past the barriers of my lids. It was overwhelming relief as I’d never felt before. Things seemed to become clearer through the blur of salty eyes.
“If this was your fault, I would hate you. But it’s not, so I don’t.” It didn’t feel that simple; but it, for the most part, was. I couldn’t hate him because he’d never done anything to merit loathing. It’s true; the trouble that he brought with him rivaled hurricanes but if I could take all the wind and the rain it meant I could have him too. I took his hand and tugged his arm. We climbed the stairs that creaked slightly with each step. In the quiet, the house seemed to echo with memories. Children running down steps. A boy and a girl laughing over secrets that no one else would ever know. A terrified woman fighting off a man twice her size.
We wandered into the room of the house that once served as our sanctuary. I gazed briefly at the door and lock that may have saved my life. Nolan ran a hand over the wall; it looked dreadfully empty. Where the bed used to be, I sat down and Nolan followed. We leaned against the wall facing the door and I knew that I wasn’t the only one stuck in moments of the past. As Nolan ran his thumb over the back of my hands, I could see the very same instant playing out in both our heads. Because of those moments, instants in time that paralleled the worst gales and tempests of centuries, I could have Nolan.
