For instance, he was determined like never before to stay clean and to push himself into finishing his college studies. He only had another year, which would start in three months. He would stay at home and study, only leaving to visit Charlie or myself. He also appeared deeply concerned that we should continue our association and I reassured him that we would. But my assurances never stopped him from asking about it every new phone call, as though I hadn’t promised to do so previously.

  Throughout our talks, I felt something drawing us together and I tried to ignore it in many ways. My father’s warnings still rang in my head and kept me from overly committing myself to him. I sensed more than ever that I needed to confront him about Heather Todd. I needed to know exactly what happened and why everyone kept giving me the impression that he had had something to do with it.

  Even so, I was still drawn to him by a powerful inner urge. An example of this was the fact that I continually dreamt of him. These dreams were much brighter than the previous ones and he no longer cried. We would be walking through a forest, golden sunbeams flooding down through the gaps in the trees and sparkling upon the dry leaves on the ground. We would run together through these avenues of trees, our hands entwined as we raced along, leaves crunching underfoot. He would let go and race off ahead, call to me to follow him as he jogged toward the white light that stood at the avenue’s end. With glee I would follow him into the light and we would emerge on the other side onto a beach, or into a meadow, climb the steps of a castle, sit perched on high-up rocks as our eyes searched the sun-drenched hills that rolled all around us, my head rested upon his shoulder, his arm gripping my waist, such wonder rushing through me. In the morning, I would awake, embarrassed of these dreams, and attempt to forget them. But no matter how hard I attempted to push their memory down, they always had a habit of resurfacing throughout the day.

  Five days after I’d last seen Josh, I finally found a window of opportunity and arranged a visit. He was two days from getting out now, and it brought such a smile to my lips when I heard the happiness erupt in his voice after I told him I was coming to see him.

  “I have a great place we can go,” he said excitedly over the phone. “You ever go down to Crab Cove?”

  “Yes. Mostly when I was a little girl, but not so much since.”

  “Then we’ll go for a stroll along the boardwalk. Come pick me up in an hour.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you soon.”

  A flutter cascaded through my heart and I felt slightly faint when I put the phone down. But I shook it off.

  Just over an hour later, we arrived at the beachfront of Crab Cove. Kay had driven us, and she waited back in the minivan while Josh pushed me along the boardwalk. It was a calm day with only a light breeze prevailing, the sky as blue as Josh’s eyes and not a cloud in sight. In our ears echoed the sound of the ocean crashing against the white sands of the shore and the seagulls squawking as they looped through the air. At the water’s edge, where the sand was wet, the beach was full of little holes where small red crabs lived. There were thousands of them along the perforated sand and the gulls would occasionally swoop down to snatch up an unfortunate crab as it scampered back to its hole.

  “It’s so beautiful here,” I remarked to Josh.

  “Yes, it is. Of all the places in the city, this is the one I’ve missed the most: the ocean and the crabs.”

  We made it further along the boardwalk until we reached a part overhung on one side by a small cliff, a wooden stairway zigzagging up its front. A bench stood at the base of it, looking out to sea, and Josh parked me up next to it before sitting down.

  Both of us were silent for a while, our eyes cast out toward the glittering line of the horizon, until Josh finally spoke:

  “It’s really good to see you. It really is. I haven’t been able to get you out of my head since the other day.”

  “You don’t have to say that,” I commented awkwardly.

  “I feel I do. Having you around has some weird effect on me.”

  “I have a weird effect on you!?”

  “Not in any bad way.”

  “Then in what way?”

  “In the way that I feel like doing good when you’re around. I don't need to prove myself or act the tough guy. You make it okay to want to be good. You make me see a purpose in that.”

  His words sounded so sincere to my ears. We turned to face one another and as I gazed into his crystal eyes a gentle smile eclipsed both our lips. I felt myself floating off into the blue, cast adrift upon the tranquil ocean of his irises. I wanted to take him in my arms there and then. But I stopped myself, knowing that I couldn’t succumb to him until I’d cleared everything up about Heather Todd. I felt that today, before we left the beach, it had to happen.

  “And you were sincere the other day on the phone,” I began, shaking off his eyes, “you’re still committed to finishing college, living life for the better, not wasting it?”

  “I want to be good,” he replied firmly, his eyes appearing to tell me exactly the same. “Even though I have to admit I’m not sure how, or what it exactly entails.”

  “You will do,” I assured him, “by the way it makes you feel. By the way you feel a little more tranquil when you know you’ve achieved something positive. You don’t have to go around helping others—”

  “Like you?” he interjected.

  “I guess. Anyway, you don’t have to do that. You can just complete your studies and work for your father’s company if that’s how it works out.”

  “I’m not sure I want to be my father’s apprentice.”

  “But perhaps if you were involved with him, you could sway him, make the company fairer.”

  “I think you underestimate the will of my father, Sarah. He controls all aspects of his life and those of his company. His number one goal is power over all else. He only ever cedes to anything when it is in the interests of that power. And even then, he never cedes for long and always finds some form of treachery to eventually beat his rival.”

  “You sound like you know a lot about his so-called treachery?”

  “I know bits and pieces,” he said with an agitated expression.

  “But you, Josh, you don’t want to be like that, right?”

  “Never,” he stated firmly.

  I was overjoyed, my smile almost lifting the cheeks off of my face, and, as though instructed by some sort of mechanism of the heart, I took ahold of his hands. Feeling the warmth of my fingers, he squeezed his own between them and we continued to gaze into each other.

  “I know I keep asking,” he began, his voice tinged with a gentle pleading, “but you will keep with me? You won’t leave me once I’m out? Because I feel that I need you to keep me focused, to keep me from relapsing.”

  “But I’m sure you won’t,” I said back to him. “You just need to discipline yourself. I think there’s a change happening in you right now. I think it has everything to do with you saving me and those people. It’s a great change you’re going through.”

  “But I feel like I could fall back into those bad old ways again,” he replied, shrugging off my comments. “I sense that once I’m out I’ll begin getting bored and all the old ghosts will begin to whisper to me again, push me off the edge until I’m back to where I was before.”

  “I believe in you, Josh,” I stated to him firmly, his shimmering eyes blazing at me. “I truly do.”

  He shone such a warm smile at me then that a delicate shiver ran through me, and before I knew what he was doing, he’d let go of my hands and taken ahold of my body. He leaned into me and the next moment we were kissing. My initial surprise slowly evaporated and I closed my eyes, my own hands moving over his firm body as the lustful ferocity of our kiss intensified and we melted into our passions. For so long, both of us had locked this secret desire inside of us, and now it was being released. We were possessed by its febrile heat. My hands gripped his firm, sinewed body, raced over it, my fingers running along every part of his splendidly formed torso. His hands too worked their way up my slender body, gently cupping my breasts and running his thumb over my nipples, making my whole body erupt in explosive light. I softened within his hands, a languid ecstasy taking over as I felt us as one, his soft lips against my own, the tenderness of his tongue in my mouth, the shivering heat in my body erupting, my groin becoming warm and an inner heat spreading through me, my heartbeat quickening until it hurt my chest, feeling myself disappear into desire, wanting his hands to move across—

  I had to push him away, afraid of where we were heading.

  “I’m sorry,” he said breathlessly when we were parted.

  “It’s okay,” I replied, attempting to regain my own breath.

  We both relaxed, our gazes turned once more to the surf and our hands once again entwined. While we sat there, I realized almost immediately that something had just happened. The feelings I’d just experienced were new to me. I’d only ever kissed one other man before: Karl. But the feelings I had during the kiss with Josh, the way my body reacted to his touch, to his smell, his taste, these all made me feel something far higher than I’d ever felt before. In fact the way I felt about Josh in general, the way that he had existed in my thoughts constantly since the day I struck him in the street, the way I seemed to look into his eyes and see my future existing there. All of this made me realize that I was falling in love.

  As I thought this, the embers of our kiss still glowing in my body, I leaned my head onto his shoulder and he instinctively kissed me upon the crown, our fingers pressing tighter together.

  “What does this mean?” I asked as my head rested upon him.

  “Whatever you want it to,” was his casual reply. “I won’t lie, I feel a strong attraction to you. And for once it’s not purely physical. For only the second time in my life I feel love.”

  Again the name of Heather appeared in my mind when he said ‘second time,’ and an inner urge wouldn’t let me leave it. I had to ask:

  “This first time, it was with Heather Todd wasn’t it?”

  He turned his head sharply, knocking me off his shoulder. I craned my neck back and he looked me straight in the eyes. A look that held simultaneously anger and terror shone on his face and contorted the features of it.

  “You’ve been looking up on me,” he stated.

  “I only searched her name on the internet.”

  “Who gave you her name?”

  I decided to lie.

  “It was on the news. It was mentioned that you’d experienced the loss of your girlfriend when you were eighteen. I looked it up and all the articles said that she’d gone into the sea at night and disappeared.”

  His face loosened when I said this and he appeared to be relieved.

  “One day,” he began, “I will tell you everything about Heather. But today is about us and I won’t ruin it. Do you believe me when I tell you that one day I’ll reveal every detail?”

  “Of course,” I said with a nod of the head.

  “Then let us just enjoy the rest of this day together.”

  He turned his head once more and relaxed, so I resumed my former position upon his shoulder. In that moment I was willing to accept anything from him, and although he hadn’t cured my curiosity, he’d subdued it for the moment.

  For now, I simply enjoyed the comfort of his hand entwined within mine, my head rested upon him and a feeling inside me as though the two of us were becoming one being fused together.

  JOSH

  On returning from Crab Cove, I went off to my room and, typically, lay on my bed. I wasn’t tired, though. The exact opposite in fact. I couldn’t keep still and kept fidgeting, springing up every so often and pacing the room, before throwing myself back down onto the mattress. It was like the door to the dungeon I’d been trapped in for many years had suddenly opened and flooded the cell with soothing sunlight that washed over me. Such an energy emerged within my cells and I felt them vibrating together in febrile excitement. It was very similar to the feeling I had for Heather. But there was more to this one. With age the feeling had become more refined, more mature. It wasn’t just a need to be by Sarah’s side; it was a need to be a part of her. It was a need to hand myself over to her, even though I didn’t really know what that entailed or even meant. It was an inner desire to live vicariously through her; the strongest desire a person can have toward another, because it is the only one that dismisses the self in favor of that other.

  While I restlessly lay there, my phone went off and I picked it up with eagerness. But my eagerness was quelled a little when I saw that it was Holman, not Sarah.

  “Hey, Holman,” I answered.

  “How are you, kiddo?” he asked.

  “Kiddo!?” I exclaimed incredulously. “You do remember I’m twenty-five, don’t you, or has senility finally caught up with your ancient old ass?”

  “Ha! Well, you still act like a kid, that’s for sure. Anyway, I’m only calling to tell you that I’ll be by on Wednesday to pick you up. Sounds like you’re all done there. Your shrink seems to think that you’re actually gonna make it this time.”

  “They tell us to take every step as it comes,” I remarked. “But I do feel good.”

  “No bullshit?” he suddenly asked.

  “No, really. I feel much better. Plus I’ve met someone.”

  “At rehab? Because you’ve met girls at rehab before and it never lasted more than a few weeks.”

  “She’s not from rehab. She’s the girl we pulled out of the car.”

  “The one with the kids!?” he exclaimed.

  “No! The girl in the front. The one whose name you got for me; Sarah. She came to see me after I got to the Peaks and we’ve been getting to know each other ever since. She’s visited me in here a few times.”

  “What makes this any different from all the others?”

  “I really want to be with this one,” was my sincere answer. “I feel some kind of indescribable pull between us, as though a piece of elastic were joining us, constantly dragging us back to one another.”

  “I heard you talk about a broad like this before. Heather. And we know how that turned out.”

  Once again her name. First Sarah and now Holman. She was haunting me through other people it seemed, and my mind clouded over for a second or two before I could speak, her cold, dead face staring at me from the shadows of my head.

  “Sarah isn’t Heather,” I stated in a low voice. “Heather wasn’t well. I was sucked into her madness. But Sarah is not like that. She’s drawing me into something else; she’s making me a better person. She makes me want to get better.”

  “I hope so, kid. I really do. What does she do for a job?”

  “She works for her father’s law firm.”

  “A lawyer, huh! Shit! You’re not trying to save your old man some money on all the lawyers he uses for you by dating one are you? Getting yourself free representation!”

  “No,” I said, grinning at his joke. “She’s not that type of lawyer. She works mostly with poor people. Helping them out with their problems. Legal aid cases.”

  “Sounds like there’s not much money in that.”

  “She’s not interested in money. You should see her. She’s beautiful, yet wears the most basic clothes. And for some reason this makes her more beautiful than any girl I’ve ever seen. There’s something deeper to her, something that speaks to me. I feel like—”

  “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Holman interrupted. “I think I’m gonna vomit!”

  Again he made me laugh.

  “I wouldn’t expect a stone heart like yours to understand,” I remarked.

  “Hey! I’ve been in love. Just a long time ago and it never worked out for me. Now I prefer to be on my own.”

  “You sad old fart!” I remarked mirthfully.

  “Ha! Yeah, you’re probably right. Anyway, I spend too much time covering the asses of you and your old man to get myself a nice little relationship.”

  “Just do what dad does: have a new one every three months when you get bored.”

  “Your father needs the prestige of a beautiful woman,” Holman put to me, “to look powerful—it helps him with his business associates. It’s all dick sizes and how beautiful their women are. I’m just the guy who has to pack her bags, drive her to the airport, give her a handful of money and tell her it’s over!”

  “Poor old Holman.”

  “Yeah, poor me,” he let out, before adding, “Well, I’m glad you’re better, kid. You do sound a lot better. More chirpy, as my mother would have said. So I’ll see you about ten in the morning on Wednesday, okay?”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  “See you then, kid.”

  He hung up, and not two seconds later, my mind instinctively returned to its musings on the subject of Sarah Dillinger. I was unable to sit still and I began recalling our earlier kiss, reliving it within my body, feeling its—

  I decided to switch on the television to take my mind off of her. It was as I watched some black-and-white film about the second world war that my phone came to life once more. I picked it up and this time a wave of joy flourished through me like a flock of birds released from a cage. It was Sarah.

  “Hey,” I immediately answered.

  However, the sound on the other end instantly filled me with dark foreboding. She was sobbing, and I could hear her tears as she sniffed and moaned.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18