Page 43 of Thicker Than Water
But I’d tried to be strong for her. I’d promised that everything would be okay. I’d reminded her that, if nothing else, Jason would be safe from the police’s suspicion, now that he had an alibi. I’d framed it for her as a silver lining, a shimmering strand of hope, but as I reversed out of her driveway, all I saw was a swamp of darkness. And I knew then that to survive the night, I’d need a distraction. I’d need to dissociate from my scuffed-up heart, keep my mind from circling that alibi and everything it meant, keep my mind from doing anything at all.
I’d need to be only a body: hot skin and fiery nerve endings and loud, pulsing want.
I drove on autopilot to Wyatt’s. When I passed Clive Clayton’s house, I swallowed the sharp ache in my throat, suppressed the memory of Clive’s hand on my breast, the well-worn image of his car crossing a double yellow line. Because thoughts of Clive would lead to thoughts of Jason, how my brother pulled me from that man’s wreckage again and again. And I didn’t want to think of Jason. Didn’t want Maeve’s confession to keep on skinning me raw.
Now Wyatt nuzzles against me, his fingers inching up my arm before working at the space between my shoulder blades. It feels good, and I almost lean into it, reach back to clamp him closer. But the sun stings my eyes—a reminder that I shouldn’t even be here.
“No,” I say. “It’s morning.”
He retracts his fingers, but his laughter tickles my neck. “I can only touch you at night?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” I tear off the sheet and fumble for my clothes. Walking around the room half-hunched, I pick them up piece by piece.
Wyatt rolls onto his back, setting his eyes on the ceiling. He’s seen all of me, every scar and freckle and unruly hair, but he’s giving me the illusion of privacy. I step into my underwear, clasp my bra, then shove my head into my sweater.
“We could do this more often,” he says, voice slow and distant, like he’s slipping back to sleep. “I love waking up with you.”
I pause, my jeans halfway up my hips. “I didn’t intend to stay the night.”
But what did I intend to do? Blunt my pain with sex. Drown out my thoughts. Check and check. But what does it mean that I found out my brother—mybrother, of all people—was a cheater, and I ran straight to the man who cheated on me?
“It was a mistake,” I say.
Wyatt’s face tightens—almost a wince. His eyes close as if he’s steeling himself. And since he doesn’t answer, I have to keep going, have to make sure we both understand.
“It didn’t mean anything. It was nothing.”
The words have the rusty taste of a lie. Because looking at him now—his bare chest blanketed by sun, his hair flattened by his pillow, a portrait of so many mornings from our old life together—it isn’t nothing I feel; it’s everything.
I feel our Sunday afternoons, weaving through flea markets, inventing origin stories for cracked porcelain dolls. I feel our Saturday nights, playing “One-star Bartender,” a game to see who could mix the most repulsive drink, before we’d abandon our tumblers, kiss with boozy lips, whisper-laugh against each other’s mouths the names we’d given our concoctions: Ditzy Ostrich, Jaunty Street Sweeper, Bashful Teacup. I even feel the plush skin of Wyatt’s earlobe, which I’d tug sometimes when we were in public, a signal that I wanted him, that we should hurry off together, find some private space.
For a moment, I want all of it again—as equally, perhaps, as I want to run out the door.
“Sorry for accidentally crashing here,” I say. “I have to go, though. I need to shower and change before I leave for the hospital.”
His eyes still shut, he shifts his jaw back and forth, as if considering whether to speak.
“What?” I prompt.
“Nothing. I know you’ll say no, but—just so it’s clear: you can always shower here. Your extra change of clothes is still in your drawer.”
My gaze jerks to the drawer he’s referencing—the top left of his dresser. I dig my thumb into my palm, my hand remembering the shape of the drawer’s knob.
“You kept that?” I ask.
He turns his head, opens his eyes. “I kept everything.”
My palm throbs beneath my thumb. I swallow before asking: “Like what?”
“Well, there’s the proton pack you built me for Halloween.”
I dig harder into my hand. Two years ago, I’d been inspired by a story he told—as kids, he and his friend decided to dress up as Ghostbusters one Halloween, but while his friend’s mom went all out, making the most realistic proton pack outside of the actual movie prop, Wyatt had only a plain, unpainted carboard box with a vacuum hose duct-taped on. So ahead of a costume party we’d been invited to, I went all out, too, studying stills from the films so I could replicate each button, each wire, each coil. When I finally presented it to him, Wyatt’s reaction was adorable, his mouth morphing back and forth between wide-open shock and giddy grin.
“The box from the care package you made me when I had the flu,” he continues, “the one you collaged with labels from my favorite beers. The sticky notes you left on my bathroom mirror of different animals in love; my favorite was always the kitten and the caterpillar. And”—he shrugs—“I don’t know, all the things like that.”
I look away from him but find myself staring at the set of chopsticks propped on his bookshelf.NOT BREADSTICKS, they read, and I’m whirled back to our first date, to Wyatt’s endearing fumble withhis appetizer, to our first anniversary when he told me he’d cherish those chopsticks as if they were actually made of bread.
I wonder how he does this, holds on to all our artifacts when they’re only reminders of all that we’ve lost.
