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Willa doesn’t leave the sofa. She doesn’t get in my face. She stays tucked into Exton’s side. “Since your accident, I’ve thought of how we met. I appreciated your humor. I was scared and in pain, and you were kind and funny. You distracted me from the madness swirling in my brain. I’m not that pithy and I can’t wink the way you can. I’m certainly not as charming as you can be.”
Her speech is interrupted by Exton growling and turning his face to hers. She pats his stomach and looks him in the face. “He was charming. I wanted you. I still want you. Hello.” She points at her stomach and smiles widely at Exton before turning back to me.
“Layton, you are ease and sunshine. And you don’t have that right now. But I hope I can offer a little of that back to you as you go through this. Our situations aren’t remotely close, but if you need someone to remind you who you are, I’m happy to do it.”
I hold her eyes and nod. I’m numb. While her speech is kind, it doesn’t gut me. Nothing could gut me. There’s a black pit where any feeling could be. But I love this woman all the same. I’m thankful she’s in our family and pleased that Exton found her.
“One last thing,” She lets that dangle before she drops the hammer. “You said you knew a PT that could come to the house and work with me after my surgery last year. Have you considered contacting him or her and having them work with you here? I know you’ve forgotten more than I’ll ever know about muscles and rehab, but it can’t hurt to have a professional in your corner who understands your goals.”
Sweet Willa just dumped cold water on me without even knowing it. I know PTs in Austin and recommended one for her. She can’t possibly know she’s put Livy in my face… Reminded me of every place I’m deficient in one fell swoop. I clench my jaw.
Once I control my emotions, I speak. “I’m not staying here, so that’s not an option. And this”—I look around the room from Willa to my family, fighting the bubbling anger churning in my gut—“Is…” I shake my head. “Are you literally challenging me on my own anger? My own loss? Do you think I’m not allowed to deal with losingeverythingthe way I want? When did any of you decide I need your permission to do any-fucking-thing?”
I stare into their faces, feeling too many emotions, the numbness relegated to a corner of my mind that I’d like to find again.
No amount of therapy can fix what’s wrong with me and I certainly know better than wishing for a woman like Exton has, only one that reminds me of an origami Pixie.
Exton pipes in, staring squarely at me, face hard, but speaking to the room. “Intervention is over. Layton isn’t receiving anything we say, and he has no intention of listening. Let him go. He’s not at rock bottom… Yet.”
I don’t know which scares me worse—his giving up on trying to help me or the idea that I have further to fall into blackness. The one seems brutal, the other ominous in its prophecy. Neither are welcome. Nor are their alternatives.
I want to scream. I also want to numb, and numbing is faster and easier than anything else. I twist my walker and crutch my way toward the hall.
“Layton?” Pop calls.
“Not now,” Exton cuts him off. “Not if you want him to hear you.”
Pop grumbles under his breath, and his boots sound as he walks away. The front door opens and slams and silence falls over the house. A quiet click-click-click follows me to my room. Luna.
“Looney? You should go back to your mom. You don’t want to be with me.” I’m pretty sure I say it out loud. I pop a full tablet and the crumbs of one I’d broken for quick access yesterday and cringe as I sit on the bed. Lying takes another effort, and my breaths finally slow as I position on the mattress, waiting for the black edges to dissolve and dreams to take me.
Just before that moment, the clicking speeds, and Luna leaps onto the bed. She’s never done this before and isn’t graceful in the movement. But she tucks into my good side from knee to ribs and, with a huge exhale, burrows in.
Her breaths are slow and melodious in no time, providing a rhythm for me. Calm overtakes me for the first time since… Since Florida. And I sleep.
* * *
I notice as Luna shifts and runs in her sleep. In the moment between asleep and awake, I allow myself a dream, a delusion of Livy next to me. She’s warm and folded into my side as if she were made to fit here. She pushes back into my dick and wiggles her ass against me as she talks in her sleep. My cock recognizes her and reaches for her as I pull her deeper into my side, folding my nose into her hair and drinking deep of her scent. Contentment overwhelms me as I know this is where I’m meant to be. This is home. This is joy. This is… I’m sucked under again.
When I wake again, Luna is gone and a glass of water sits on a coaster on the nightstand. The ice has melted and there’s no condensation, so it must be hours old.
I have no idea what time it is and I don’t care. I take a sip, quelling my constant dry mouth. I turn onto my right shoulder and fight to find a dream that escapes me. It was easy and happy, or I was happy. That’s a specter, though, a ghost of an old life. Dead and buried. Never to be resurrected.
TWENTY-SIX
HARD NOT TO LOVE THE SOX
LIVY
Idon’t mind flying. Never have. But my second flight in as many months and not to anywhere fun is particularly annoying.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please lift your seats to their full upright position, stow all computers and large electronics devices you took out during flight and put your tray tables in the locked position. The captain has indicated our descent into Boston Logan International Airport. We’ll have you on the ground in just a few minutes.”
Why do they always announce the arrival destination? As if I’ve just discovered I’m on the wrong flight after three hours and all the protocols and checks. It’s the word Boston that raises my hackles.
The perfect New England city, memorialized on television and in movies. The accents, the seafood, the snow. There are also the universities, including the one where my father teaches. On campus, he looks just as one would expect with a sweater vest under a sport coat, a flat wool cap on his head, carrying a pipe and a briefcase.
Or he will. Give it a few weeks. Summer break means a break for him from students and dissertations. I should remember that semesters in full swing are the best time for visits due to his distractibility.
