backwards
"Because you're a child!" she screams. Her face is red, her hair pouring out of the messy bun at the top of her head, her hands are balled into fists that she hits her sides with repeatedly, like a toddler lost in a tantrum. "You are going nowhere but backwards, and I know that's exactly what you want."
"Oh, you do?" he asks in a low voice, but everything in him is screaming different things and the cacophony of conflicting thoughts is muddling his mind. His brain is calling for him to grab that suitcase out of her hand and beg her to reconsider, and at once another order is waved behind his eyes to yell at her until he pops a vein and then kick her out and listen to her screech on the other side of the door like the child he knows she is, the child she accuses him of being. "I'm sure you know all about immaturity, Caitlin, since you're a shining fucking example right now. Running away from something you can't understand, yeah, really fucking mature!"
He thinks for a moment her heart will give out from anger, but the moment passes and she bounds toward him, her hands raised, ready to fight. She hits his chest and kicks at his legs, and he tries to ignore the stabs of pain, the bruises that will cover his legs in the places she has kicked with her heavy shoes. Tears stream down her face and she coughs and shrieks incoherent things and then caps it off with a slap so forceful that for all his strength propels him back a step.
"You think I don't understand?" she whispers, her face close to his, deadly calm, and for the first time he is a little apprehensive. "You think you're some mystery to me? You are damaged, Tommy. Damaged. You're no good to anybody because you love that damage, you are nothing without it, and you won't let anybody forget it, especially not me and especially not yourself!"
"That is bullshit!" he starts to protest but she silences him with a glare he has seen many times, but never aimed at him, and he doesn't even know how they got here.
"No, it isn't," she says, and she takes a step back, her lips white around the edges, her eyes wild and foreign now. "Do you want to know what is? All that fucking anger, that is bullshit. And it's bullshit that you won't let it cool down because you don't want to let it go. Not even for me. I've been waiting for a miracle here, Tommy. Jesus, you getting your shit together? That's gonna take more than a miracle! I understand that now, and that's why I'm leaving."
She turns her back on him and picks up her suitcase, opening the door to his apartment. The fire in him melts away for just a second when he realizes my God, she's actually leaving.
"Caitlin," he calls. He is expecting a yell over her shoulder, or a last glance, or an obscenity whispered under her breath, or something, anything, but she doesn't even look back to acknowledge him. Then the fire comes back, roaring inside his chest, and he shouts, "Yeah, good riddance! Find some pansy fucker that will cry about his feelings like you want, I don't know why you bothered with me in the first fucking place!" and he slams the door after her and breaks everything in the apartment and drinks until he blacks out.
And when he wakes up in the morning, she's still gone.
.
"Cate, what are you doing?" he asks patiently, stepping into the living room to see her rearranging herself under a blanket on the couch, rolled into a tiny ball of irrepressible discontent.
She blatantly ignores him, her eyes screwed shut, her face screaming, "Go away," so she doesn't have to, but he does some ignoring too, sitting on the other side of the couch at her feet leaning over her until she cracks an eye open and sees him. Immediately, she kicks his chest, not rough enough to inflict pain, but with enough force to push him back to the other side. It's progress, he decides. She never holds back when she really wants to hurt him.
"Come on, let's go to bed," he tells her.
She shakes her head. "I'm good here, thanks."
The stiff politeness in her voice makes him frown. She sounds like a stranger, detached and disconnected. She curls up tighter, until her chin rests on her knees.
"Look, I'm sorry," he says.
"You don't even know what you're apologizing for," she deadpans.
He wants to hold on to that patience he told himself he wouldn't let go of when he left his room but he can feel it slipping away despite his viselike grip. "Then tell me what I'm apologizing for, Caitlin, Jesus Christ!"
"I won't sleep in the same bed as you when your mind is on another plane of existence, okay?" She pokes her head out of her cocoon and glares at him. "You are not here, Tommy. You are never here. You are somewhere far away. I want you to be here with me."
"I am here with you," he says, and he takes her hand and presses it to his chest, so small and tiny compared to his bulk. "I am right here, dammit. Where else would I be, but here with you?"
She looks at him, the glare in her face but not her eyes, and she doesn't move her hand from his chest, which he thinks is good, but then she sits up and takes his face in both her hands, searching, and he doesn't know what for. He wants her to see his confusion, but his anger breaks through and he turns his face away from her.
"What do you want my mind there for anyway?" he asks bitterly. "We're going to sleep, not school, for fuck's sake."
Something passes over her face, like she was wearing a mask this whole time, feigning anger. Something like disappointment, and sadness, overwhelming sadness, and she lowers her gaze and takes her hands away from his face.
"Okay, Tommy," she says, defeated in a way he has never seen her. "Okay."
He goes back to bed to wait for her but she doesn't come back in until day breaks and the sky is lighting up, and she doesn't touch him or speak, and neither of them sleep a wink.
.
She presses her face to her pillow and takes a deep breath, and he watches her with a smile on his face that he isn't aware of until she places a hand over it.
"I have a thing about sleeping on other people's pillows, you know," she tells him.
"Oh, really?" he says, amused. "OCD or something? Nutcase."
"No, really," she persists. "I can't sleep on any pillow but my own. It's the stupidest thing, something about the way it smells like me. Like home."
"What does home smell like?" he asks.
"Like the ocean, and incense, because my brother was such a hippie," she whispers, and suddenly her eyes become sad, downcast. Her hand slides off his face. "I was raised by him, and we moved around a lot, basically followed whatever job he could get. But he stuck to the coasts, east, west, it didn't matter to him, as long as there was sun and surf, he could care less."
"Sounds better than Pittsburgh," he observes. "Why did you come here?"
Her eyes flashed up to his, unreadable. "He died here, many years ago. And it turns out that he was the only thing that kept up my spirit of adventure because as soon as he was in the ground, the last thing on my mind all of a sudden was to move again. So I stayed."
He wants to lighten up the mood so he says, "This makes for great pillow talk, yeah," and her eyes soften but she doesn't smile and he sort of slumps.
"Tell me about your brother," she says.
He shrugs, rolling onto his back. He thinks he hears her sigh, and he thinks it sounds tired.
"Nothing to tell," he says.
"I saw that fight on Youtube," she says, and his heart plummets, because God knows he's tried to keep that from her. "The Sparta fight. The final."
"Lotta people did," he tries to brush it away but it just sits there until he turns back on his side and says, "We don't talk all that much, Cate, that's all."
She doesn't understand, he knows she doesn't. There is no way she can speak about her brother with such love and he can't even stand to bring his up.
"Tommy, how will I get you if you don't let me in?" she asks.
He tries to roll over again but she grabs his arm and steadies him. His mood is shot to hell now; all he can see are broken images of the fight, all he can feel is the blinding pain from his shoulder, all he can hear is Brandon telling him, "I love you. I love you, Tommy." And all he knows is a sinking disappointment, in himself for never reaching toward Brandon, for letting that olive branch he set out that day in the fight to wither, forgotten, until Brandon's attempts became far and few between. And in Brandon, for not trying hard enough.
She wants to listen, she wants to understand, but how can she, when he himself doesn't understand?
"We were kids together but that's it," he says. He traces shapes on the ceiling with his eyes as he feels hers on him. "It was a long time ago. And then me and my mom moved, and he stayed with Pop. And some girl."
"A girl?"
"He's married to her now. They have two daughters."
"What are their names?"
For some reason, one of the names escapes him. One is named Emily, he knows that, but the youngest... he wracks his brain but he can't remember, even as her face swims in his mind. He can't explain why he feels so guilty all of a sudden, so guilty that it's like a weight on his chest that won't let up.
"Drop it, Caitlin, okay?" he whispers, closing his eyes. "Not tonight."
Her irritation at being brushed off is only momentary. She presses his head to her chest and runs her fingers through his hair, and she says, "Go to sleep, Tommy."
He almost does, until something occurs to him. "You don't sleep on other people's pillows?"
"Yeah. Something about the scent."
"You've been sleeping on mine for a while, Cate."
She kisses his head and goes back to brushing his hair, and the motion is so rhythmic and soothing that he's asleep in moments, and he might have imagined that she replied, "Maybe it's because you feel like home." But he doesn't think that he did.
.
"...will probably be back in half an hour, but I'll tell him you called," she's saying when he enters the apartment, stinking to high heaven and wiping his face with the towel around his neck. He collapses onto the couch and looks at her expectantly as she places the phone back into its cradle.
"Who was that?" he asks just as she casually says, "How was the run?"
"Fine," he mutters, narrowing his eyes at her suspiciously. "Who was that?"
She shifts around for a moment, then her green eyes snap up to meet his and she says, "Your father."
He tenses but places the towel over his face and leans his head back so she won't see him. "Oh."
He feels her sit beside him, and her hand clasps his tightly. He presses his lips together when she removes the towel and keeps his eyes on the ceiling.
"Are you gonna call him?" she asks.
"Maybe," he tells her to throw her off the scent of secrets she doesn't know yet, but it doesn't help because she leans toward him, one arm braced on his other side to keep her up, and he has no choice but to look at her.
"You stink," she observes.
"I know," he mutters.
"Are you not speaking with your father?" she says next.
The fire inside him roars at the mention of Paddy coming out of her mouth. Is nothing sacred anymore? Can he not enjoy her company without his memory soiling it for him?
"Cate, I stink," he says lightly, taking both her arms and crossing them over her chest. He presses her slightly into the sofa, and she sinks in between two cushions, but where her eyes would be alight with laughter at this, there is only a soft confusion contorting her mouth into a frown.
"Well, he said to call when you had the time," she says, shrugging his hands off her.
Her eyes are inquisitive. He gives her a small kiss as he pulls himself off the couch and heads for the shower.
"Okay, I got it," he says, waving the matter away with a casual flick of his wrist.
Her eyes burn twin holes in the back of his head as he walks away from her.
.
"Favorite color?"
He considers for a moment. "Probably red."
"Why?"
He raises an eyebrow at her across the table. "Do I need a reason?"
"Of course," she says. "Everything needs a reason, Tommy."
He nods slowly, his eyes roving around the restaurant, deliberating. "I don't know. It's versatile, I guess."
"Versatile?" she repeats, holding back a laugh. "Okay, what? How can a color be versatile?"
"Hey, you asked," he says, pointing a finger at her, and the laugh bursts out of her mouth. He watches her, caught in a half laugh himself.
"Okay, favorite childhood memory."
He nods again and looks around to buy him some time, but his grip on his fork has tightened and he sees her eyes dart to it and then back to his face carefully.
"Uh," he begins, then he clears his throat. "Um." Dammit, he thinks, say something. Her eyes narrow ever so slightly, and she tilts her head to one side, her dark curls cascading over her shoulder as she does. The longer the silence stretches, the less easily he'll be able to maneuver out of this, he knows, so he quickly says the first thing that comes to mind. "It's stupid, but I got nothing else." At her encouraging smile, he says, "It was my birthday a long time ago, I was a teenager, and my mom and I, we went to this travelling carnival thing. We didn't do that kind of stuff usually, so it was a change, and, um, that's it." He lowers his gaze, his mother's face swimming in his mind's eye, but blurred with time. He realizes that he has forgotten important things about her, like the exact shape of her eyes, or the way she always wore her hair, or the length of her fingers. He wonders if one day he will try to remember her and won't be able to and it is so sobering a thought that he puts the fork down and looks around blankly.
A pressure on his hand makes him search for the source, and he finds her hand over his, small but strong and reassuring, and when he looks at her face, he finds eyes that stare directly into his.
"That's not stupid," she says. "It's a nice memory."
He manages a smile, and she smiles back, and he picks up his fork and they eat in a comfortable silence that she breaks after a while to suggest they share dessert.
.
At the intersection of two quiet suburban streets, he presses his hands on his knees and catches his breath. The sun is just breaking over the horizon, he can hear a bird or two gingerly waking and chirping a short, soft song. He gives himself a moment to breathe before he starts running again, faster and faster, checking his watch as he does. She is usually out at this time, almost always is, just as he comes to the end of his morning run, smoking a cigarette by the entrance into her ground level apartment as she watches the sunrise. At first it was a thing to do because he was bored, to jog past her and see her leaning against her front door, as still as a statue, save for the cigarette, burning bright in the predawn light, thin tendrils of smoke reaching up as high as they could go until fading into nonexistence. In the quiet of the morning, he would rush past her and imagine an entire story about her, that maybe she was a mother and the only time she had to herself to smoke was just then, or maybe she had gotten into a fight with her boyfriend and was cooling off outside. He invented a new story every day, kept his mind on it as he pushed his body through further distances and his legs turned into lead bars and he wanted nothing more than to stop but didn't. Then it became an almost habit, and when she got used to seeing him every morning, she would wave. Today, she waves, and when he slows down to catch his breath, she puts out the cigarette and walks up to him, and he feels a little like he's being approached by a celebrity, someone he sees all the time but has never met.
"I see you a lot," she observes, her eyes flashing in the darkness as they take him in.
"I run in the morning," he explains. She has a nice face, something he has never noticed because of the distance and the dark.
"I smoke in the morning," she replies.
"Can't you smoke when the sun comes up?" he asks despite himself.
She gives him a peculiar look. "No. Then I would smoke all the time. Before sunrise, that's my rule. And then I'm just limited to one or two a day."
He nods, understanding. A thousand little stories are crossed out of his head. "That's smart."
"Not as smart as quitting altogether would be," she mutters. "What's your name?"
"Tommy," he tells her.
She puts her hand out to shake. It's swallowed up in his. "I'm Caitlin."
Her eyes meet his, and in the light of the rising sun, he sees that they're green, like freshly cut grass. He thinks about letting go of her hand, but he can't seem to be able to and her eyes bore into his until he drops them both, looking east, to the smudge of orange in the horizon.
"Hi," he says finally.
He catches her gaze again, and he sees that a smile is tugging on the corners of her lips, small and barely perceptible, but there, and her eyes get smaller as the smile gets more noticeable, and it's a very pretty thing to see in such a bland part of town. He thinks up a new story and wonders if he should bother trying to make it happen. He's been wrong about the others. But maybe he'll be right about this.
She says, "Hi."
fin