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“Gianni?” My eyes flutter, the room dissolving as I fight the urge to sleep.
“Yes.” His voice is in time with his fingers as they smooth my skin, like hands over wet clay, molding out the distressed lines and furrows beneath the masterpiece.
“I don’t know what’s real anymore.” A silence hangs. His large frame blocks out the weak light from the lamp, shrouding me in uncertainty and sleep.
“This is real. You and I, here and now.” I let this play upon the tiny fragments that I hold of Gianni.
And I know, even amongst the carnage, what I feel for Gianni is real.
ChapterTwenty
Lewis. I hear my name upon his lips. He’s lying on the floor of the coffee shop. I call out to him, but he doesn’t hear me. I go to stand, but my body sinks beneath a pile of sand gathered at my feet. I try to wiggle my toes, but the sand already reaches my calves. It multiplies fast. I dig frantically, the sand running between my fingers. I might as well be using a colander. It reaches my waist, and my panic begins to rise faster than the sand. The sand devours Lewis, his body quickly swallowed. I dig deeper and deeper, the sand embedding under my nails as I search for Lewis. I catch a glimpse of him as my hands part the tiny grains, but no sooner have I unearthed him than the sand trickles back across his face, burying him from my view. My mouth opens with a scream desperate to be released, but the sand has now reached my neck. My head strains against the onslaught, but my legs and arms are useless against the dead mass of grit clinging to my skin. As it floods my mouth, my eyes strain as if trying to scream for themselves.
“Hey, hey. It’s okay.” A hand is upon me, my body rising and falling as my breath leaves me in fits, the darkness settling around me as my eyes adjust to my surroundings. I pull my legs up and spread my arms in front of me, rubbing my hands over my skin, trying to rid myself of the invisible sand.
“Where am I?” I’m shocked the words slip out so easily, the sand having vanished from my mouth like a giant vacuum has sucked it dry, the crack of my lips making me press them together.
“You’re here with me. It’s okay. You’re safe.” My breathing slows as I take in the blinds, the closet, and the small lamp at the side of the bed. Gianni sits next to me, his suit gone, his chest bare. He’s like a windbreaker protecting me from the elements on one side but leaving me open to the attack of my dreams on the other.
He said he’d be here. He said I’d need him.
The sequence of events play in reverse as I recall why I’m here, sharing his bed—the knife, the bin bag, and the coffee shop. These things circulate through my thoughts, my mind a revolving door, rotating smoothly until Lewis appears, his foot jammed against the glass, bringing the door to a standstill. A gut-wrenching pain hauls itself against my insides, and for a split second, I think I will be sick. Panic wells from deep within me as Lewis alive and Lewis dead spin in my head like a ballroom dance. I hold up his lifeless body while I smile at the crowd.
I understand now why Gianni insisted on staying with me.
“Are you okay?”
It takes a second to stem the nausea, and I hope only words will come from my mouth when I finally open it. “I’m so tired, but my head is running at a speed I can’t seem to shut off.” I’m surprised at how coherent I am.
“The adrenaline has left your body, but it will take a long time for your thoughts to catch up. You’ve been through a hellish ordeal.” I wait for him to elaborate, wondering if this is the part where he opens up, but the shutters are still down.
“I keep seeing Lewis. Every time I close my eyes, he’s there. I can’t stop seeing the look on his face. He’s waiting for me to do something. To help him.” I’d started composed, a slowness in my choice of words, but as I relive it, the words tumble out, free-falling as I throw myself before Gianni, hoping he’ll have the answers, the medicine I need to heal. But he sits and waits, saying nothing as I continue.
“I told him he would be okay, that everything would be okay, and it’s not. Nothing is okay. Nothing will ever be okay again. What about his wife? What if she wants to know what his last words were? It was my name. I know why he said my name. Because it is all my fault. I should have done something. I could have stopped it from happening, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I panicked and…”
“Hey, it’s okay.” He touches my hand as the sobs erupt. I feel stupid—ridiculous—sitting in his bed crying.
“Sometimes it is better not to remember the last things that were said,” he says. I pull the hem of his T-shirt up to my face, dabbing the tears as they roll down my arm. I rein in the flow, ears alert to the sound of the shutters moving slightly.
“Do you remember what you said to your wife?” I wince at my question, but I want to know what happened, what he’d seen and felt, and something inside me tells me he might need this too.
He shifts back slightly as if he needs room to talk like the memory is too large to hold in such a confined space. He places his hand on the back of his neck as his lips twitch, irritated by what’s about to come forth.
“I said many things after the car had crashed. I told her everything would be okay, that help was on its way, and she needed to hang on until we were out of the car.” His head darts toward the window, where the blinds hide the night sky. “I don’t know what she heard, what she would have remembered. But it’s what I said before the car hit the tree that I’ll never forget.” I need to swallow, my throat feels tight as I wait for him to finish, but I don’t want the noise to interrupt him. This part of the memory is clearly the most painful.
The clock ticks and the radiator hums, but Gianni remains silent as I hang on to the suspense.
“What did you say?” His eyes remain upon the blinds. It is some time before his head swivels, his eyes lock on mine, and I know he’s never told anyone what he’s about to tell me.
“I told her I hated her.”
ChapterTwenty-One
There’s darkness in the room, despite the glow from the lamp beside us. Gianni holds my gaze in a contest to see who will look away first. How fucked up do I consider what he’s told me? This is the question that plays in the air, the idea he told his wife he hated her minutes before the car crashed, taking her life.
I want to say something, but everything feels wrong. Exactly how do I feel about what he said? Does he hate all women, not just me, if he didn’t even like his wife?
The buzzing lamp beside us will explode if one of us doesn’t say something soon.
