First Comes Love (13 page)

Period. End of the counseling discussion. But I won’t give up. I keep my voice calm and try to water down his anger. I tell him that talking to someone could help his family work through this, learn how to cope and make it easier for his parents to transition after he leaves town.

He takes such a sharp breath, I swear his chest is on fire. “Did you get that off a grieving pamphlet?”

“No,” I say quietly.

“What do you know about coping, Dylan?” he shoots back. “Who are
you
to tell me
I
need therapy?” he says, as if I’m the crazy one. “Are you saying I’m depressed?”

“No, I didn’t say that, and even if you were, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. You’ve been through a tragedy. All I’m saying is, it’s okay to ask people for help.”

“Well, I don’t need to pay a shrink just to hear someone tell me life’s going to be okay.”

I take a long, deep breath and tell him that’s the problem. Life isn’t okay, and denying it won’t help.

“Sometimes you need professionals to help you work through things,” I say.

Gray raises his hands. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” he says. He crosses his arms tightly over his chest to contain them.

“There are counselors who have worked with hundreds of people in your shoes,” I say. “They can give your family advice on how to deal with all this.”

He glares at me like my words are a slap across his face. “I don’t need any advice. I’m fine.”

“I’m worried about your parents,” I say.

“Why?” he asks.

“Doesn’t it feel good to finally talk about Amanda?”

He nods once.

“Don’t you think it would help your parents if they could talk about her?” I try to keep my voice smooth. I crossed a line by making his family’s personal business my own. But isn’t that what friendship is? Isn’t that what love is? It’s more than caring and laughing and inspiring. It’s about taking hurt and anger off people’s shoulders and helping to carry the weight. It’s more important to love people on their worst days than their best.

“Don’t concern yourself with my parents, Dylan. You don’t even know them. Stop buying them gifts and trying to surprise them. It’s weird. You can’t care about people you don’t know. Maybe
you’re
the one who should see a therapist.”

I know he doesn’t mean it. He’s trying to steer the conversation away from himself, even if it means attacking me. “I care about you,” I say. “And I know you’re worried about your parents. Isn’t that why you’re still in Phoenix?”

He presses his lips together, and then opens them to almost shout, “They don’t need counseling. This is none of your business, so drop it.” It’s more than a subtle hint. But I’m already submerged waist deep. I might as well dive in.

“I just think your mom and dad could use an outlet,” I say. “Maybe you guys could meet with a therapist as a family?”

“What’s a shrink going to do? Tell us to keep a journal and find a happy place?”

“No.”

“Diagnose us with some grieving disorder and prescribe a bottle of artificial mood enhancer? Fuck
that.
”

I have to fight to keep my voice calm, and I meet his glaring eyes: “Going to a counselor isn’t a weak thing to do. That’s your problem. You see it as desperate.”

“Whatever.”

“Have you ever thought that going to a counselor with your parents is maybe the bravest thing you could do?” I ask. “The most loving thing? The most selfless thing? If you feel so responsible about helping them deal with Amanda’s death, then maybe this is something you need to do for them. This isn’t just about you.”

He starts to yell.

“What do you know about what we’re going through? Nothing! I’m not going to spill my feelings to some counselor who’s just going to sit there and see me as another sad kid who lost his sister. Just another tragic family dealing with death. Because this isn’t just any sister. Or any daughter.”

He slams his fist on the dashboard.

“It’s my sister,” he shouts. “It’s Amanda. And my life is never going to be the same again. Don’t tell me to listen to some stranger say that I need to get over it and I need to move on. Because if they ever knew Amanda, if you knew her, you’d get it.”

“What would I get?” I ask.

“That she deserves to have us miss her every single day. Even if it tortures us. She deserves that.”

My throat is tight. I take a shaky breath.

“I’m only going to say this once, because I love you and I think you need to hear it.”

I look over at him and see that his jaw is set tight. He’s facing forward and his eyes are closed.

“You need to live your life, Gray. You need to live for the future again. Amanda isn’t coming back. I’m not saying you have to forget about her. But you have to move on,” I say. “You’re not the one who died.”

He tells me to shut up before he smashes the window.

“Fine,” I say, and my voice sounds torn. I bite my lips together to stop them from shaking. I focus on the white lines of the road ahead.

Gray turns up the stereo. He pulls his sweatshirt hood low over his head so he can block out the things he doesn’t want to see and the questions he doesn’t want to face. He’s trying to disappear again.

I’m fine.

But I can’t turn my brain off. Six hours later.

I’m fine.

Why did she have to go there? We had the most incredible day. The most incredible summer. Why did she have to strike the one nerve that would make me lash out like that? I know I hurt her. I could hear it in her voice. And all she did was call me out on the things I need to hear. All she did was care. I’m such an asshole.

I’m fine.

I roll over in bed and stare out my window. I watch the moon in the sky; it looks so peaceful and far away, and that’s where I want to be. It’s been six hours. I miss her. She’s usually in my arms at this time. My bed feels too big for my single body. It’s swallowing me.

I sit up and kick off my covers. I throw a pair of shorts on over my boxers and slip on some flip-flops. I walk out into the hot night. It has to be close to a hundred degrees, even at three in the morning. The dry grass cracks under my sandals like straw.

I drive to her house through dark, lifeless streets. I blast the Killers from my rolled-down window and try to focus on the music instead of the guilt clogging my mind. I feel like smoking again, like filling my lungs with something toxic, because my whole body feels toxic. I hate that I can’t take back what I said. I would never hit Dylan. I would never hurt her. But I just beat her up with words. And I’m supposed to sleep after that? Sleep doesn’t come to people who have a heavy apology resting on their heart. Sleep knows better.

I pull up to the curb next to her house and stare at the dark windows. I turn off the engine, walk around to the back, and grab some gravel rocks from the landscape bordering the patio. I throw a small piece up and it ricochets off her window with a loud tap. I’ve done this before. It’s our prehistoric-style telephone call.

I throw another rock, and a few seconds later a dim light fills the window of her room. Dylan pulls the curtains back and I look up to see her silhouette in the frame.

She doesn’t have to ask who it is. She doesn’t even have to acknowledge me. She could be mad, she could be stubborn. She could hold a grudge, could hold me at arm’s length. I close my eyes and pray she doesn’t. Life’s too short to hold back forgiveness. And we only have a few more weeks together. I map out my apology once more while I wait for her to come down.

She makes it easy for me. We sit on the wicker couch outside and she rests her head in my lap and listens while I tell her she was right, that she said exactly what I needed to hear and she’s the one person in my life who has the balls to confront me. And I’m not saying it just to win her back. I mean every word of it. I tell her I spent an hour online looking at counselors in Phoenix. I tell her I need to talk to my parents about it; I just needed someone to kick me hard enough to do it. And I thank her for loving me enough to say the hard things.

She’s half asleep in my lap, her face as serene as an angel’s in the moonlight. I trace my fingers along her smooth skin, and it feels like warm porcelain. I tell her I’m sorry I flipped out. I said things I didn’t mean. Dylan slowly lifts herself up, and her sleepy eyes meet mine.

“I love you, Gray,” she says. “And I love that you care about your parents. But you’re stuck here and you hate it. You’re not doing anybody any good.”

“Yeah,” I say, and I rest my head against the back of the chair and look up at the sky. It’s easy to hear words. It’s another thing to accept them.

“You can’t live for your parents. You’re not responsible for making them happy. They need to do that on their own. You need to work on you. That’s enough for you to handle right now.”

I nod.

“If your sister were sitting here right now, what would she tell your family to do?”

I sigh, and my nose prickles as tears tease the back of my eyes. I tell Dylan she’d want me to get the hell out of here. She’d tell my mom to stop using work as an escape. She’d tell my dad to stop scheduling so many business trips as an excuse to avoid the house.

“You know what I admire about you?” Dylan says. “You’re a survivor. And you’re a lot stronger than you give yourself credit for. You just don’t see it.”

I shake my head and tell her she only sees the best in people. I’m not that strong.

“My dad walked out on my mom when I was little,” Dylan says.

“What?” I say. I stare at Dylan. How, in all this time, has she never mentioned this? She tells me she can barely remember him. He left when she was four years old and he met her a few years ago and said he was sorry and he was sober now and he wanted to reconnect, to be there for her and her sister. But then he never called again. And it’s okay, she says. Her mom remarried this wonderful man who’s always been a father to her.

Dylan tells me she’s only bringing it up because she’s so amazed at how her mom dealt with being abandoned. Her mom showed her that when life hands you tragedy, you can do two things with it. You can let it kick you down and make you weak and turn you into a victim. Or you can have hope that you’ll get through it and there’s still something amazing to live for.

“That’s what my mom did,” Dylan says. “She survived. She was angry and regretted marrying him, but she didn’t dwell on it. She let it go and focused on the future. She could have been bitter and turned me off to love and family because it can be just misery and heartache. But she didn’t.”

Dylan tells me victims don’t make it very far in life.

“But I know that’s not you,” she says.

“How do you know that?” I ask.

She shrugs. “Because you let me in.”

I nod and wrap my fingers around hers. Dylan rests her head on my shoulder and we watch the sunlight creep over the horizon and run out above us in the sky. I’m finally beginning to understand why this misguided angel has stumbled into my life, and for the first time, I’m starting to believe I deserve her.

My mom and dad are in the family room at the same time.
I haven’t seen them together in months. It’s now or never. I walk in the room and stand between them. My dad’s sitting in a recliner, hiding behind the newspaper, and my mom’s grading papers on the love seat. The news is on. Someone was kidnapped in Tempe. A girl from ASU is missing. Five more local businesses closed. Fun, uplifting stories.

Dylan and I played out the scenario several times. She played my parents and acted out different reactions. She was hurt, she was angry, she was suspicious, she was hysterical. She made me rehearse for hours.

I sit down on the couch opposite my mom, across from my dad, and we form an asymmetrical triangle. I wait for them to notice to me. And they don’t. I observe my dad’s face over the newspaper. He’s gained weight since Amanda died. More business trips. More fast food. And he’s aged. His hair is thinner, lighter, with streaks of gray. My mom’s lost weight. Her face is tight and gaunt. Her skin is pale. I realize we’ve all been slowly dying.

Then I think, Why
am
I here? Why am I neglecting my life when they don’t even notice me? Dylan was right. This isn’t doing any of us any good. A pulse of courage jumps through my veins and pushes against my heart.

I clear my throat, and when I have their attention the words pour out. I tell them everything. I tell them I want all of us to meet with a counselor. I’m tired of living in the shadow of Amanda’s death and letting her memory pull a curtain between us and the rest of the world. I tell them we aren’t doing Amanda any honor by giving up, by dying ourselves. We are the ones that are living. So it’s about time we got around to doing it.

They both stare at me as if I’m a stranger in their son’s body. I’ve never stood up to them before. Confrontation isn’t common in my family. Respect is obedience. Don’t question authority. Accept it. But back then I always had Amanda. I had her to vent to when I needed to disagree. She
was
my family. She pumped life into us, around us. It was her love that made us all connect. We’re withering away without her, like plants without roots.

My dad sets down his paper. He crosses his arms and asks me what this is all about.

“I want to play baseball again,” I say. I repeat my entire conversation with Coach Clark and I list all the reasons I should accept the offer. I tell him I’d regret passing it up this time.

My dad’s silent. My mom’s skeptical. A minute crawls by before anyone speaks up.

“You’ve been out of baseball a long time, Gray,” Mom says.

I tell her it’s more than baseball. I want my life back. I want to go to school and start over. I want to have a future.

“It’s that girl you met, isn’t it?” my dad asks. “You want to follow that girl.”

I throw my hands up in the air and tell them I have a full-ride scholarship. What part of this don’t they get? I neglect to mention that I plan on asking Dylan to move out to New Mexico with me. And I’m pretty confident she’ll do it.

My mom tells me it isn’t as easy as it sounds. That escaping to Albuquerque won’t instantly fix all my problems. I tighten my lips and thank God Dylan brought up this same point a few days ago. She predicted my mom might cave in, that she’d reach for the excuse that I’m running away because she’d rather have me here, miserable, than lose me. It’s true what they say, that misery loves company. When Dylan tested this response, I reacted by punching the wall of my bedroom. Now I can handle it with a little more maturity.