Exhale (10 page)

Derek had fallen silent again. I continued rubbing his forearm softly as questions surrounding Kyle’s death flooded my mind. I needed to know how it had happened, what had gone wrong, because just knowing that he was gone was not nearly enough.

“I shouldn’t have given up so easily. I should have knocked him out and dragged him to my Jeep.  There were a million ways I could’ve gotten him in there, but I didn’t use any of them. Instead I got pissed, told him to either pass out or drive home drunk, and walked away with a chip on my shoulder because I was tired of arguing with him and my jaw fuckin’ hurt,” Derek whispered, answering my unspoken questions in an unwavering voice. “If I’d just fought with him a little bit more or stayed just a little bit longer, I could’ve gotten him into my Jeep and saved his life.”

My stomach twisted and I closed my eyes in disbelief. He had tried to drive home? Images of Kyle stumbling, laughing, and the echoes of his slurred speech filled my mind. He had been wasted. Kyle knew better than to drive when he’d had that much to drink. He knew. His betrayed and pain-filled stare flashed behind my closed eyelids. Kyle had attempted to drive himself home because he and Derek were fighting about me. If he had never seen us kiss, then he would be alive right now. My throat swelled shut as I finally felt tears trickle down my cheeks.

The guilt from that realization slammed into me so powerfully that it made my heart hammer and bile rise up on the back of my throat. It wasn’t Kyle who should be blamed for his death, it was me. I played the biggest role in this. I should have known that he would follow me. I shouldn’t have allowed Derek to kiss me so soon after Kyle’s confession.

I smoothed my hand against his forearm once more. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine,” I added silently.

I had thought the ride to the hospital had been a blur, but it was the next few hours that were truly a blur. Lists of relatives to call had been made. Organ donor papers had been signed. More condolences, apologies, and sad stares had been given. Throughout it all, I never left Derek’s side, even though the guilt from the situation and my part played in it built inside of me. That weight was something I knew I would never be able to let go of, something that would always be a part of me.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I spent the next day in bed, only getting up when my bladder protested too much. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. Somewhere around 10:30 in the morning, I turned my cell phone off to further block out the world. I knew the majority of my missed calls and text messages were probably from Missy, but I didn’t feel like talking, especially to her.

It wasn’t just because she was incredibly insensitive to a fault, and would be talking about her own feelings the entire conversation, never giving me room to get a word in edgewise to express my own, but also because I knew she had truly cared about Kyle as a friend and maybe even a little more. I knew she’d be upset, in pain, and confused just like me, but the honest truth of it was… I could only handle one person’s grief and heartache at a time. This was why I blocked her and everyone else out. What I felt was enough and if I added anyone else’s emotions to it, I would break completely.

Come Tuesday afternoon, I was still in the same position. I still hadn’t showered. I still hadn’t eaten and my cell phone still remained turned off. There was a soft knock against my door, but it didn’t startle me. I heard the soft footsteps approaching long before the knock had even come. Honestly, I had been surprised that my parents had let me close myself off in here for as long as I had been, without interference. Their presence in my bedroom at some point during the day had been expected to say the least.

“Honey?” Mom’s soft voice cut through the silence of my room. “I brought you a sandwich. You really should try to eat something, sweetheart.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You have to at least eat a few bites. You need to get something in your stomach, Katie,” she said with as much motherly concern as she could muster through her own audible heartache. “I’ll leave it right here for you.”

I didn’t say a word. I waited until I heard that distinct click of my bedroom door closing before I sat up to retrieve the sandwich from my nightstand. She was right. Mom was always right. I needed something to eat. I knew that well over twenty-four hours had passed since the last bite of food had passed between my lips.

I took a small bite and began chewing, the tears that seemed to be in an endless supply burst from my eyes again. No matter how much I cried, there would never be enough tears shed from me to wash away the pain that had etched itself into my very soul from Kyle’s death.

I had a lot of time to think while lying in bed, a lot of time to beat myself up for never once giving Kyle a chance with me.
You know you love me just as much as I love you. It’s there, Kat, don’t keep ignoring it
. His words echoed through my mind, forcing my tears to flow faster.

Had there been something there? I thought of the day at the beach and how I had felt when Missy had first decided to put her
seduce Kyle plan
into action, my stomach burned from the memory. My bottom lip trembled and the few bites of sandwich I had eaten threatened to come back up, as the reality of me never knowing whether something could have ever happen between the two of us sunk in. Kyle was gone.

You’re gorgeous, Kat, never forget it. His voice echoed hauntingly through my mind. My chest squeezed my lungs so tightly there was no air left inside.

I lay in bed for roughly another hour. When Mom came back in to check on me, she sat at the edge of my bed and smoothed her hand across my back in slow circles like she used to when I was a little girl and sick.

“I talked to Darlene today. They’re having him cremated this afternoon. There’s going to be some sort of a service where people can express their condolences this evening. Your dad and I are going and we think it would be nice if you came. We all need to get out of the house and we all need to say goodbye.” She paused, as if she was waiting for me to respond, but I didn’t. I kept my eyes closed and remained as still as I had been when she’d first walked in. “I’m sure Derek would like to see you.” The words that she didn’t say hung in the air…
and Kyle would like for you to say goodbye
. Her touch disappeared and the sound of her footsteps faded as she exited my room, closing the door behind her.

I buried my head deeper into my pillow. I had thought of Derek, about how his arms would feel wrapped around me, how his kiss could possibly dull the pain. I’d thought about how horrible of a friend, of a girlfriend or whatever it was that we were to each other, I was being by hiding out in my room and ignoring him as well as the rest of the world. Even so, I couldn’t bring myself to do anything other than what I had been doing since I’d found out—fall apart.

* * * *

Everyone was here, all of them dressed respectfully in black. I’d heard the word ‘sorry’ tossed around so many times in the span of a few hours that it had lost all meaning, and didn’t even sound like a word anymore to my ears. I knew I needed to be here, I knew it was to be expected, but all I wanted was to be at home; sealed off in the coffin that was my room, because it hurt too badly to be here. To see Derek and Kyle’s parents so distraught over the loss of their son. I felt responsible for their anguish.  But they weren’t the ones that I found it hardest to look at, Derek was. I looked into Derek’s eyes and it was like looking into Kyle’s.

It was as if Kyle was haunting me. It was too hard to look at him…too hard to see Kyle’s face, and from the way everyone else flittered around Derek and refused to meet his gaze, I could tell that I wasn’t the only one. My heartbeat slowed as the same pain from the hospital entered my chest. I was torn in half between wanting to reach out and console Derek, and wanting to keep my distance from him because he reminded me too much of Kyle and the reason why we were here.

I swallowed hard and thought of how horrible all this must be for Derek. I remembered him saying at the hospital that he could feel it, that he could actually feel that Kyle was gone. For a split second, I felt selfish for wallowing in my own pity like I had been for the last few days, but death was something I had never been touched by until now. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel or how I wasn’t; all I knew was what I felt. In the end that was all that mattered, wasn’t it?

“I can’t believe this, can you?” Missy asked as she sipped from a Styrofoam cup of black coffee and ate some little pastry. 

I wasn’t sure why, because I didn’t understand how anyone could have an appetite at something like this, but people had brought food and drinks and created a little buffet-style thing on a table in the back.

“I mean, I just keep picturing his last night on earth in my mind and how most of it was with me.” Missy’s words sounded strangled, and I knew from the sniffling coming from her that she had begun crying again, but I didn’t care. I stood up, leaving my untouched cup of tea on the table, and walked away. “If you’re going back to the food table, can you bring me some more of those little cream puff pastries?”

I wasn’t going back to the food table, but I didn’t say that, I didn’t say anything, I was leaving. I’d had all I could handle of this and desperately needed to be alone.

It wasn’t a long walk from the funeral home to the beach, and even if it had been, I still would have taken it instead of driving. I had never been one of those people who enjoyed driving, and in times like this, I did not find it soothing. I kicked off my black ballerina flats at the base of the same wooden bridge I’d walked across the night of the party, and carried them on the tips of my fingers.

I walked until I reached the spot where everything had fallen apart that night. I had always heard that the spirits of those you have loved and lost hung around you, especially in your moments of grief.  I hoped that this was true. I hoped that Kyle would hear me when I said what I was about to say. I took in a deep breath and wrapped my arms around myself to better control my shaking limbs.

“I loved you too and I’m so sorry I didn’t get to tell you that before, even if I didn’t mean it the same way as you,” I whispered as I stared out at the waves.

The wind picked up and I sunk my toes into the cool sand, deeper. I wondered if I would always feel this way—lost and broken, like I had been tossed into the deepest part of the ocean and was struggling to find the surface as the waves thrashed me around like nothing—or would it eventually come to an end. I didn’t think it would, how could it?

I closed my eyes and listened to the soothing sounds of the ocean as I tried to picture how the night had panned out all over again. But all I could see was Kyle’s haunting eyes as they’d bored into me when he’d caught us. Guilt twisted my stomach and forced all the breath from my lungs. I opened my eyes finally and gazed out to the choppy waters of the ocean. Everything should look different today, because he was officially gone now, but it didn’t. It all looked the same, as though Kyle were still here.  As though his existence had been so insignificant in the larger scheme of things that his absence hadn’t touched anything besides me, Derek, our families, and friends. How could that even be possible? How could life be so cruel?

“Great minds think alike,” Derek said from behind me. I could hear a slight smile in his voice and felt my own lips twisting to mimic it. I stopped them before they could succeed. I couldn’t smile, not on this day. Not with Derek by my side. It seemed wrong in so many ways.

“I guess,” I said, turning to look at him as he stepped to my side.

His dark, ebony-colored hair was the exact shade of his suit. Dark circles rimmed his eyes, a telltale sign of his lack of sleep. He was so close the sleeve of his blazer brushed against the bare skin of my arm. The slightest bit of his warmth seeped through from him to my skin, and I felt the familiar fuzzy feeling swell within the pit of my stomach from the contact. The desire to be wrapped up in his arms with my head buried against his chest became overwhelming. Throughout my entire life, Derek had always been the one to comfort me the easiest, the same way that Kyle had always been the one who could make me laugh, but I couldn’t allow myself that luxury of his comfort this time. It seemed wrong.

“Did you notice how no one could even look me in the eyes back there, not even my own parents?” Derek asked, as he looked straight ahead to the ocean waves I had been staring at for so long now.

I shifted away slightly, so that his arm wasn’t touching me anymore, so that it couldn’t comfort me when I didn’t deserve it. “No, I didn’t.”

He turned to look at me, his green eyes shaded with sorrow. “I did, just like I noticed just now that you can’t even touch me.”

I shifted my posture. “That’s not true,” I lied in an effort to spare his feelings, because he wouldn’t understand the true reason behind my not being able to touch him. He would only see it for what it was and have it add to everything else he was feeling in this moment.

“Isn’t it?” he questioned, his left eyebrow rising slightly. I looked away, because Kyle used to make that same gesture whenever he knew he was right but was attempting to be coy. “I get it…I know I remind you and everyone else too much of him right now. I can’t look at me either.” He sighed and shook his head. “I’ve actually thought about avoiding mirrors for the rest of my life.”