Over the Causeway
Setting: "That Night, a Forest Grew"


Well, that could've been a lot worse.

I'm smoking again as I take the turn onto 125th Street, my thoughts scattered in ten different directions. I've got my top down, and in a disconnected way the warm night breeze feels good against my skin.

I left Gabriel's a couple minutes ago. When I got to the doorway I stopped to tell him goodbye, and it turned into a brief, sexless, half-apologetic hug at the threshold. Because even if he isn't the right one for me, and I can't be the right one for him, at the end of the night he's still a sweet guy. He still put up with me despite all my fucked-up, schizo shit, and he never did a thing to hurt me. I feel like crap that I used him as a rebound, but, to his credit, if he put that label to it, he barely seemed offended.

As I walked away, some small part of me wondered if that really was the last time I'll see him, if I even definitely want it to be.

Who fucking knows.

I flick the cigarette toward the double yellow as I slow for a light.

Now I'm heading back toward my brother's apartment. With Gabriel out of the picture, I don't actually have anywhere else I can go, and even though I'm pissed at Dexter and a little afraid of what I might find when I get there, for the time being it's still my home. If I have to, I'll put a bag over my head and pop an Ambien and go to sleep on the couch.

Or try to, anyway, if I can manage to stem the now free-flowing torrent of thoughts about Lundy.

They overwhelm me as the light turns green, and as I keep going for the causeway. Because I'm an unbelievable pile of shit. Because that part of me that's totally retarded, that won't shut the fuck up lately, is now working ceaselessly to come up with a way to bring it up to him, just to see if there's any chance at all. I can't stop thinking about our hug at the Allapattah scrap yard, about all our conversations, about all the things I need, half-desperately, to confess to him. And I can't kill this want, to touch him, to peel away his suit and his tea and his fucking professional veneer and finally see what's underneath them.

Because I think I'm a little in love with him.

Because I know I'm a little in love with him.

As I idle at the light in front of the causeway behind a bunch of other cars, I crave another cigarette, but I curb the impulse, reach for my water bottle instead. I drain the last of it, toss it on the passenger-side floor. Maybe I'll remember to bring it with me up to the apartment so I can throw it away. Maybe, but probably not.

For the thousandth time, my thoughts slide back to what I'd say to Lundy, if I could say anything.

I was so fucking broken before you forced me to face what happened to me. I'm still broken, but you make me feel like I won't always be, like I don't have to be. Like I'm not just the sum of every bad decision I've ever made. Like I'm not just what Moser made of me. You gave me that strength.

The Range Rover in front of me lurches forward, and I tap the gas, follow the trail of bumpers onto the Broad Causeway. I'm still fighting the need for another cigarette.

You keeping me on this case is the only reason I can sleep at night. You're what yanked me out of the tailspin. If you hadn't knocked some sense back into me, I'd still be in that fucking garage. He'd still be killing me, over and over, every night, forever.

You don't understand how fucking grateful I am.

You don't understand how desperate I was getting. Even I don't know what I might've done, just to get away from him. Just to be able to take a fucking breath.

Something painful uncoils in my guts at the silent, imaginary articulation. I don't think I could ever tell him how bad it got, those nights when I was strung out and furious and so, crushingly terrified. I haven't told anyone, not even Dexter, not even when he caught me falling off the deep end, or when I broke down on his shoulder. They were feelings I couldn't force into words. That at this point I just want to bury and forget.

I blink as I realize I'm turning into the lot in front of my brother's complex. I wasn't paying attention to the last several minutes of my life.

Yeah, what else is new?

I hunt out a space, then pull into it, kill the radio, bring the roof back up, grab my purse and bag. As I get out of my car I debate having one last cigarette before going through the gate, but I don't give into it. A vague and utterly meaningless thought that I really should quit flits through my head as I lock the door and start making my way toward the apartments.

Less than two minutes later I'm standing in front of my brother's door, hesitating. I wonder if I'm about to walk into another fuckfest or, worse, them innocently eating takeout or something on the couch. Of course, that's assuming she even eats solid foods…

Whatever.

I stick the key in the lock and open the door. "I'm home," I call as I walk in, and I immediately spot Dexter sitting as his desk in front of his laptop.

"Hey, Deb," he says, barely looking up.

I shut the door, then set my shit on the counter. "We alone?" I ask as I head, automatically, for the fridge.

"Yeah," he says.

I glance back at him as I open it. He seems more toneless than usual. I'm not sure if he's upset or just preoccupied, but he doesn't say anything as I dig through one of the drawers, finally come up with a cheese stick and some salami. Before closing it, I pause, then grab a beer too.

Dexter continues saying nothing as I put the food on the counter and open the bottle. As I take a nice, big gulp. As I open the salami package and pull out a little round of meat. As I eat the thing, and then another.

I decide not to break the silence, even if it means spending the rest of the night saying nothing, even if it means not getting to talk about Gabriel or my feelings. I'm still pissed at him for being such a fuckwad.

At long fucking last he talks, after I've eaten the cheese stick and drained the first beer, as I've returned to foraging for food, this time in the pantry.

"I thought you were spending the night at Gabriel's," he says.

I look back at him as I take out a carton of Pringles, then lift the lid and check inside. Half empty.

"I broke up with him," I say somewhat flippantly, pulling out a chip.

"What?" He still seems a couple miles away even as he meets my eyes. "Why? What happened?"

I shrug. "Nothing, really." Except that I'm a piece of shit, and I'm in love with another man. "I just realized we weren't going to work out." I consider telling him about Lundy, but I'm not sure what his reaction would be, and for now I think I want to keep it to myself. Especially since it's doomed anyway.

I eat another Pringle as I come around the counter and lean against it. "What's up with you?" I ask.

"Nothing," he says.

I give him a look.

Discomfort flashes across his features before promptly fading again. "Cody called," he admits after a second.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."

He doesn't say anything else. I keep glaring at him, sick and tired of this shit where getting information from him is like extracting teeth.

"He wants me to go to his school tomorrow," he continues finally. "He's got a presentation on Saudi Arabia and he wants me to be there."

I pull out another Pringle. "And?" I ask before eating it.

"I want to go." He pauses. "I think I will."

"What does Rita think?"

"I haven't asked her."

Jesus christ, you are a stone cold moron, Dex. "What do you mean you haven't asked her?"

"I don't know." He looks at me somewhat helplessly, or guilelessly. Idiotically. "Do you think she would mind?"

I stare at him incredulously. "Jesus christ, Dex, you are a stone cold fucking moron. You break up with her to fuck Elvira and you think it's okay for you to just show up at her son's school and pretend like nothing's changed?"

"She broke up with me," he says defensively, as if it matters.

I cross my arms, still holding the Pringles tin. "Yeah, and I'm sure it's just wild happenstance that 24 hours later you've got a naked skank and a fucking shrine erected to her in your apartment."

"Her name is Lila."

I eat another chip, don't bother to construct a reply to that.

He shifts uncomfortably in his chair. "So what do I do? He wants me to go. I want to go."

"I'd start by calling Rita," I say. "I wouldn't hold my breath though. If I were her I probably wouldn't pick up the phone."

"She'll answer," he says, with all his usual confidence.

"Will she?" I ask rhetorically, then set the tin on the counter, recross my arms. "I don't know what makes you think you still have the right to be there, whether he called you there or not."

He doesn't reply. His gaze is focused on some middle distance between us.

"Was it worth it?" I ask when he remains silent. "Was losing Rita and those kids really worth whatever the fuck you're doing with Lila?"

He meets my eyes again, but he's still as far away as he's been this whole conversation. "I don't know yet," he says.

I search his face for some hint of remorse, or regret, or any sign at all that he ever gave a shit about Rita, but it's as blank as ever. It pisses me off.

Wordlessly, I grab my second beer off the counter and head for the door. When I get outside I close it behind me, then lean over the railing, take a drink as I look down at the pool, and then the ocean, and then the lights from Bay Harbor. From some other apartment I can hear a muted bass line, feel it going through my boots.

thump thump tha-thump

I don't know what's wrong with us: me breaking up with Gabriel for Lundy, Dexter breaking up with Rita for a pale bog witch. Then again neither of us have ever been anything but idiots in the romantic department, my serial killer fiancé aside. The problem is I never learn from my mistakes, and Dex never gets far enough in his relationships to make any.

But this is unbelievably moronic, even for him. Where did he even find her?

thump thump tha-thump

Suddenly, I want to smoke again, so bad I almost taste it. I can smell my last cigarette all over me, and it might drive me crazy if I don't get out of these clothes and take a shower soon.

Exhaling, I drink more beer to try to wash the phantom taste away. It takes a few swallows before it makes any difference, until I'm almost to the end of the bottle.

I swish the liquid around with a distant note of disappointment, look from it back to Bay Harbor. My thoughts slide slowly, inevitably, back to Lundy as I finally drain it. To fragments of a hundred conversations. To whether or not I'm imagining that he feels something for me too.

I can feel the tension mounting. I know I'm not going to be able to keep a lid on it, as fucking stupid as it is. If I am imagining it, if there really is nothing there, I'm just going to create an embarrassing clusterfuck for both of us. And then I'm going to have to walk off the roof. But even knowing that, I also know I'm not going to be able to stop myself.

I look dolefully at the empty bottle, wishing it would magically refill itself, or that I didn't have to go back into the apartment for another. I'm not quite ready to see my brother's face again. He has something and he's willfully throwing it away. At least I don't think I'm wrong about Gabriel.

But about Lundy?

I sigh, tap the bottle.

thump thump tha-thump

I don't know. It's getting too late to think, and at this point I need to either shower or go grab another cigarette before I implode.

So I turn for the door, not entirely having decided on which.