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I shrug off my pack and let it land on the hardwood floor. I haven’t even gotten the chance to look around, but as I seek the best way to spill everything to her, I take a quick glance. Paintings everywhere. Of her and Holden, of their trip—the one where they worked things out and somehow found each other again. It’s all documented in colorful paint along the brick walls, telling their story.
And featured on one canvas, a painting of me and Dar. I can’t fucking believe it. I smile and head straight toward the canvas. “Is this the Bitchfits show?” I ask, reaching out to touch it, but then think better. Not knowing if her paints are sensitive to skin oils or some shit. I heard that somewhere.
“Yeah,” she says, her voice too soft, fragile. “We had such an awesome time, I couldn’t not paint it.”
“You captured her perfectly.” Darla’s standing beside me on the railing, all three of us with our hands raised in the air, our fingers formed in devil horns. Her frosty blue eyes blaze through the darkness of the painting, clear and capturing the scene, aware. Alive.
I wrap my arms around my tightening chest and face Sam. “It’s beautiful. You have some mad talent, girl.”
Sam doesn’t respond. She marches over to me and links her arms around me once more, and before I can even process it, I’m breaking down into sobs. No words. No explanations. Just acceptance.
I cry until the pain consumes, becoming a living, separate entity that devours me, until it’s all there’s left to feel.
Sam sets a cup of coffee in front of me on the small, rickety table. Her place is great; college kid chic. Cheap furniture and some just scooped right off the street corner. Holden’s engine parts—headers, gaskets, carburetors—turned into art along the walls. A mixed array of artsy and modernism turned Rom Com.
This place is so them.
I’ve somehow managed to get the whole story across to Sam without making any accusations against Boone. Well, I might have called him a sobriety peddler at one point—but that was early on in the story. I’m allowed a slight poke at him on occasion. It keeps me…me. Real.
“As much as I want to lock you up and keep you to myself,” Sam says, cupping her coffee mug close, “because I’m selfish like that, you know what you have to do, Mel. You don’t need me to tell you that. You have to go back. And soon.” Her eyes widen to punctuate her point. “I mean, hell, you can talk to that PO lady and I’m sure she’ll understand. She’ll work something out where you don’t have to go back to rehab or jail. Those people want to help…addicts, not punish them.”
I give her credit for only slightly stumbling over that word. But at least she’s keeping it real, too.
Nodding, I say, “I’m sure she would. Yeah.”
“And you really need to send Boone a message soon,” she pushes on, not missing a beat. “Mel, this guy is like whoa. Intense. I hate to say it, but he’s like your equal. He challenges you. And as much as I love you—and you know that I do—you have to admit that you really don’t hook up with guys that are much of a challenge. It’s a safety thing with you. No one gets close, and you don’t get burned.”
This is Sam. Blunt. Direct. No holding back. But it’s why I’m here. To get the truth with no filter. She wasn’t always this sure of herself, though; she had a crap ton of things to figure out, and from the little she’s told me of what’s been going on with her, she’s still working through that process. But the strong woman I always saw in her from the start, the one she bottled up deep down, is finally breaking the surface.
“That’s why I’m so scared of him,” I admit, hugging my legs to my chest. “Look, I’m not trying to bring up bad shit, but you know what that kind of loss can do to you.” For a second, I glimpse the fleeting panic in her eyes, the struggle she endured after the death of Tyler, her fiancé. But she checks it quickly.
“Boone lost his son, Sam,” I continue. “His tiny baby son. He’s probably out there now at some backyard brawl getting the shit beat out of him. He’s…hurting. I’m terrified I’ll only add to that pain. I’m so strung out. So fucked up. I just…” I drop my legs and clamp my hands on my head, trying desperately to force the words in my brain out. “I’m not what he needs. I might make light of life, treat it like it’s one long ride, but truth is, I actually care whether or not my mark on this world causes someone else pain. I don’t want that.”
Sam tilts her head, her eyes squint in contemplation. “You know, for someone so poetic and worldly, someone who tries really hard to come across like she knows herself, you don’t see yourself in true light, Mel. That’s the best part of you, or at least one of the best. Listen, you’re going to hurt him, and he’s going to hurt you. That can’t be helped.”
I huff out one short, forced laugh. “I thought you were supposed to be making me feel better.”
“Oh, no,” she says, setting her cup down, getting all seriously feisty. “You’re going to get it straight from me. The heart wants what the heart wants, remember that? You gave it to me straight once, and now it’s my turn to return the favor. I’ve always had faith you’d eventually break through to your heartwood.”
At my confused expression, she sighs, then moves to the couch to sit beside me. “Right before her birthday, Darla called me. She was freaking out. She was in some fight with this guy Crank or something, and she said she was tired of giving so much of herself to losers who were never going to be ‘the one.’”
The light goes on in my head; I vaguely remember Dar’s drama about Crank, and me trying to convince her to get over him. She always got caught up with these guys, losing herself in them, and it pained me to watch. But it was always her choice, and I… Hell. I always convinced myself to allow her some privacy, but really, did I ever actually want her to settle down with a good guy?
I know now that I needed her more than she needed me.
Even though I thought her and Jesse could make it work, I’m not sure who that was for more. So that she’d be taken care of, or so that she wouldn’t ultimately leave me. With Jesse, she’d always still need me in some way, would always remain close.
Shit, I feel even worse. The worst BFF award goes to me.
Sam notices my inner monologue with a pained expression. “I’m getting off topic. Rewind.” She reaches out, slips her finger under the silver chain around my neck and snags the charm. Then traces the little tree between her finger and thumb.
My gaze captures the tattoo of the dead tree on Sam’s inner wrist. The bare branches reaching up toward her forearm. How I missed the connection between Sam and Darla’s charm before, I don’t know. I was just so lost in my own emotional denial. Of Dar’s death, of Jesse’s involvement, of mine. Of everything.
It’s a wonder my psyche didn’t fracture that first night of stone cold withdrawals at rehab.
“What I’m getting at, is that I sent this to Darla with a reminder about what we talked about.”
At my confused look, she smiles, only it’s filled with so much heartache. “A while ago,” she says, “I figured out this link between me and dead trees. Holden had imprinted himself so deeply on me that, no matter how hard I tried to be the woman who did not love him, who did not fall apart when I thought of us, everything I became and everything around me seemed to resonate with the death inside the trees I loved so much. But…really, it wasn’t a death that brought us together. I loved his brother. I cared so much for Tyler, as my best friend and a lover, and we could’ve made a life together. There’s no true one person for any of us, no one special soul mate. We can find different levels of love and understanding and connection in a million different ways with any number of people.”
