“Yes.” Chris shuts off the water and kisses the top of my head. His arms fall over my shoulders, and he pulls me in so that our naked bodies are pressed close together.
The rise and fall of his chest reassures me. Thereislife after hell. There is breathing and life and profound love after hell. He holds me like this for a while, and together, we just breathe.
“I’m so glad he’s dead,” Chris says calmly. “I don’t care how that sounds to anyone else but you because you understand. Maybe I’m supposed to forgive him. Maybe it helps other people to do that. But I’m just glad that son of a bitch is dead. Do you understand that?”
“I understand.” I’ve never told Chris that I came close to murdering his father myself. That the only reason I didn’t was because Zach stopped me. “I’m glad he’s dead, too.”
I wonder how many more of these moments we’re going to have. How many more incidents and injuries and traumas I will hear about. How many more times I will wish that I had followed through and beaten the life out of Christopher’s father. It’s what that man deserved. It would have been justice.
Or maybe not. Maybe there is no justice for his atrocities, and I would have done something that I wouldn’t have been able to live with.
There really is no way to pay back the torture and terror he inflicted on his children.
“Hey?” Chris grabs a towel from the hook and wraps it around my back, pulling me in.
I notice it’s just the same way that Sabin did with me a few weeks ago on the dock, except that Chris refrains from shaking me around like crazy.
Chris smiles. “Please don’t look like that. Remember what I always tell you?”
“That you’re okay now. That it’s over.”
“Yes. Iamokay now, and itisover.”
“But you still have nightmares.”
“I’ll probably always have nightmares.” He smiles again, trying to comfort me.
He knows that my love for him makes his history belong to me to a degree. He knows that, when you love someone, you take on that person’s pain. So, I feel his pain, and in part, it becomes my own.
“But I amstillokay, and it isstillover. Those are truths that I hold on to more tightly than I hold on to even you, so you need to believe me.”
“I do.”
“Good. Now, let’s go to dinner and drink too much, and then we’ll come home and fuck too much.”
I kiss him and whisper into his mouth, “There is notoo much.”
“That’s my girl.”
We refuse to let the past wreck our today. That’s why we’re the team that we are.
We dry off and head back up to the house. I check my phone and see a voice mail from Sabin. I listen to it twice and then put it on speaker for the third time.
Sabin’s voice booms through. “Blythe! Blythe! I found permanent and bedbug-free housing!” he shouts with somewhat alarming glee. “It isnotin a pineapple under the sea for the simple reason that I am not SpongeBob. Thus, the pineapple-under-the-sea housing board fucking denied my application. Fucking bastards! However, I found something better. You ready for it, B? I live in a tree house! Like a goddamn cookie-baking fucking elf! Call me back!”
I look at Chris with disbelief. “Did he really say that he lives in a tree house?”
Chris grins. “Where else would Sabin live?”
November brings temperatures in the forties, overcast skies, and a quiet town. While there are a handful of cross-country skiing fanatics who might come to the Acadia area, by and large, we are in full winter mode with many restaurants and stores shut down for the season.
After struggling to acclimate when our respective siblings left, Chris and I are now back in our comfortable routine. I suppose we’re not like most people in their early twenties who would probably find the idea of semi-isolation totally unappealing. Maybe our troubled histories have influenced us in this way, but neither of us craves bars or crowds or packed social lives. Neither of us is on any social networking sites, which presumably puts us in a minuscule percentage.
Holing up for the winter limits chaos and brings a kind of simplicity and clarity that is settling. It’s not as though we don’t have friends. Granted, working from home as I do doesn’t lend itself to meeting new people, but I still talk to my friend Nichole regularly. Chris has become friendly with some people from work, and we occasionally get together with them for small dinner parties or hikes.
But very often, we’re alone, not in a pathological or dysfunctional way. It’s just because that’s what we prefer—for now at least. Maybe one day, we’ll both have calendars booked with plans but not now.
So, it’s the two of us for tomorrow’s Thanksgiving, and I’m perfectly okay with it—well, mostly okay with it. Flying everyone out here for such a short time really didn’t make much sense, and we’ll all be together over Christmas and New Year’s, so I’ll wait for the big family gathering and find plenty to be grateful for with Chris.
