Phantom Limbs (31 page)

Mom.
I went weak at the realization of all the things my mother had been living with. Mason could
see
her through the glass. He tried to get to her, tried to get her to see him, to help him . . . But she didn’t see him! The idea of her knowing that, living with that, split my heart wide open.

“Who found him first?” I asked, pressing my hands into my eyes.

Her muffled cries answered my question.

She turned to me, reached out for me, and I cried uncontrollably. She touched my face with gentle fingers. Said my name. Held me.

And together we grieved.

Later — much, much later, when we were both spent of tears — I propped myself on my side, facing Meg, even though I could see nothing in the dark. I found her hand and held it. “Meg? I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you after — after what happened.”

“Oh, Otis —”

“No. Let me finish. I’m sorry I couldn’t see what was happening to you. I’m sorry I didn’t want to listen.” I exhaled. “It’s so fucked up. All I ever wanted was to be whatever you needed.
Everything
you needed.”

It was so silent, she must have been holding her breath. I squeezed her hand. “I never would have knowingly hurt you.”

“I know that.” She let go of my hand and touched my face. “Otis, it’s not your fault. I know how much you were hurting. I know you were doing your best.”

She pulled me into a hug. Again we clung to each other, and in those moments, we were in a bubble that nothing could have penetrated. There was only Meg and me.

After a while, she said, “My therapist helped me understand that I needed to find some closure, to face all this again, to face you. Especially with my dad coming back and . . . the problems with my mom. So . . . he’s really been there for me. I’m sorry I had to take his calls. Sometimes I needed to talk to him. . . .”

“Wait, what? When you took those calls? I thought you were talking to Jeff.”

“No! That was Dave returning my calls.”

I recalled how she dropped everything to answer the phone that first night, and then again after the incident at the pool. So that was her therapist. Not her boyfriend.

“This summer I’ve been trying to figure out if I could do this. If I could come back. Dave helped me come up with a list of places to visit while I’m here, places that remind me of Mason, to gradually try to become okay, or something closer to okay. I did a few of them — Dairy Queen, Chuck E. Cheese’s, stuff like that — but it was hard. And then it turned out . . . I couldn’t do them all.” She let out a long breath. “I don’t want to go the rest of my life without you in it, but I don’t think I can spend the rest of my life being reminded of Mason.”

“I don’t want to go the rest of my life without you in it, either,” I told her. “But I can’t forget Mason for you.”

“I know that. And I’d never want you to.”

Was that what we were left with? A no-win situation?

There seemed to be nothing left to say.

We held each other in companionable hopelessness. I listened to her breathing, felt her hand resting on my chest. I didn’t know how much time passed, but I started thinking at some point she was going to have to go back to her own room, before the parents woke up and determined that maybe I wasn’t as “safe” as everyone assumed. Even if I actually was.

So I savored the last moments with her. I knew that this closeness we’d carved out here tonight was temporary. Because what had we resolved, really? Nothing. The damage wasn’t repaired — just illuminated.

She shifted, and her hand moved on my chest — just the tiniest bit, her fingertips skimming my skin. And it felt amazingly good. Also alarmingly good. I whispered, “It’s really late. Or early. We’d better get you out of here.”

“I guess you’re right.” She raised her head, her hair tickling my chest. “Good night, Ot.” She shifted again, and I could sense how near she was, could feel the warmth of her breath on my face. She leaned in to place a kiss on my cheek, but she missed — or did she? — and her lips grazed mine.

And it flipped me over a hundred and eighty degrees. Did she do it on purpose? Was it an accident?

I hugged her to me, terrified she’d pull away — terrified she
wouldn’t
. I heard her inhale sharply, and we hovered there, our lips a millimeter apart.

And then, I don’t know who initiated it or how it happened, but it just did, like the pull of the moon. And the moment our lips met, it already wasn’t enough. A thousand years of kissing wouldn’t have been enough. But I pulled back, needing confirmation that it wasn’t just me, that I wasn’t misreading her, taking advantage. She pulled me back to her, and with a gentleness that just about cracked me in half, she held my face in her hands and kissed me slowly, softly — like she thought I might break.

And I kissed her back. Every cell of my being wanted to pull her closer, to bury myself inside her, to meld with her. To show her what it could feel like when someone loved you. Hell, to show myself that, too. But I held back, held back everything other than kisses so slow and soft, they were both barely there and more seismic than anything I’d ever known.

I ran my fingers over her hair and down her back, pulling her closer, closer, but she was never close enough. She whispered my name against my mouth as we kissed, which was an indescribable turn-on. She took my hand and slid it under her shirt, onto her back. Her skin was so soft, so hot under my fingers, and the sounds she made as I touched her sent me through the stratosphere.

She ran her hands over my back, my chest, and then her fingers wandered down, down, brushing over my stomach, nerve endings exploding like supernovas, my heart pounding. I touched her back, her side, hesitating, wanting to touch more of her. She took my hand, tentatively guiding. The room spun as she moved my hand from her rib cage upward. She gasped as I skimmed my fingers over her breast — I pulled away briefly with a smile to
shhh
her — and then resumed, kissing her, touching her, feeling her respond to me in ways that eclipsed every fantasy I’d ever had.

A voice in my head — a very small, faint voice — was suggesting to me that I put an end to this now, as there were few directions left with regard to outcome. I tried to pull away, but Meg pulled me back. “Don’t stop,” she whispered breathlessly. “Please.”

“Oh God. Please don’t say please, Meg.”

“Please.”

And just as my lips started to melt against hers again, my phone rang. I tried to ignore it, but it was such an odd time to get a call. . . .

“Otis, no,” Meg whispered when I pulled away.

“Sorry,” I whispered. I rolled over and scrabbled to reach my phone on the nightstand, my knee protesting as loudly as other parts of me were.

I checked the screen. It was Abby. “Hello?”

“I’m so glad you answered!” Abby said. “Listen. It’s Dara. We had — sort of a fight.”

“What happened?” I asked, sitting up, wincing as pain shot through my knee.

“She just started saying all these bizarre things. She wants to move with me to Colorado! I mean, I really like her and everything, Otis, but I’m going to college! I’m not ready to move in together or anything. She said she
loves
me! I mean, we’ve been going out, what, a couple
weeks
?”

“What did you say to her?” I asked, trying not to sound accusing. I tried to ignore the sound of Meg’s rapid breathing, which was distracting.

“I just told her that things were moving too fast, and it wasn’t the right time in my life to get that serious, and we should maybe take a step back.”

My heart dropped, imagining what it must have been like for Dara to put herself out there like that, only to be shut down. And it kind of pissed me off, that Abby had moved so fast if this was so fucking casual to her. Dara had never let anyone near her before Abby — had never even been
kissed
before Abby.

“What’d she say,” I asked, “when you . . . when you broke up with her?”

“She just went off! And then she started drinking — she has vodka in her dresser drawers, did you know that? And she just got more and more upset until finally she kicked me out.”

“When was this?”

“Maybe an hour ago? I’ve tried calling her, but she won’t answer. I thought maybe she’d talk to you.”

I rubbed my forehead. “I’ll try.”

“Call me back!”

I hung up.

“What’s going on?” Meg asked, sitting up beside me.

I gave her the rundown.

“Poor Dara,” Meg said. Then, tentatively: “But . . . isn’t this the sort of thing she tends to do? Create drama and wait for you to come to the rescue?”

Although it might look that way to Meg, one thing Dara was
not
was a drama queen. I dialed Dara. To my surprise, she answered.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, why?” She sounded totally calm.

I was baffled. “Abby called me. She said you had a big fight, and you weren’t answering the phone.”

“I’m fine. I’ve told you not to worry about me.”

I processed that for a second. “Aren’t you upset?”

“I’m okay now. It’s all good. But I have to go — I have some stuff to do.”

“What stuff?” I said. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“So I keep odd hours. Go to sleep, Mueller. And stop worrying about me. Okay?”

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah.”

We hung up, but the uneasy feeling stayed with me. “Something’s wrong,” I said to Meg.

“I thought she said she was okay?” Meg said, reaching out and stroking my arm.

“I know, but . . .” I thought about it, then shook my head. I was already reaching for my phone.

Meg sighed.

This time Dara didn’t answer.

There were a lot of reasons she might not answer. She might not hear the phone. She might be busy. She might be annoyed that I was calling again. But I couldn’t rest. I called her again and again, growing increasingly uneasy.

And then she sent a text:

And then she sent another:

I paused for about a second. And then I flew into motion.

“WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO, STEAL YOUR parents’ car and drive there without a license?”

“Yes.” Remembering the glass on the floor, I slipped my shoes on as fast as I could, ignoring my screaming knee, then went to find the light switch.

“Otis, come on. You’re not being rational.”

I flicked the switch, and we both squinted in the sudden brightness. I pulled on some clothes and limped to the bathroom, downing a couple of Motrin while I was in there. When I came out, Meg was waiting for me in the hall. “At least wake up your parents and have one of them drive you,” she whispered. “You’ll be breaking the law! What if you get pulled over?”

“My parents will just want to call the cops.” I sighed. “I’m sorry. I know this seems insane to you. But you don’t understand Dara.” Maybe she never would. Maybe the only two people in all the world who could understand me and Dara were me and Dara.

“I have to go,” I said simply.

She watched me for a moment, then slipped out of my grasp.

And I knew that in Meg’s eyes, I’d made my choice: I’d chosen Dara over her. But I couldn’t do anything about that; the tug to Dara was too strong. The fact was, my life was with Dara now — it had been for years. Whether Meg came back or not, Dara would be a part of my life. If she was okay.

I couldn’t think about any of that, though. I hobbled back to my bedroom and grabbed the mirror box, then took my dad’s keys from the hook by the door and headed out.

Our car was in the driveway, fortunately behind Meg’s dad’s. I eased onto the road and set the navigation lady for home.

As soon as I was on the highway, though, the certainty that had filled me just moments before started draining away. Was I being totally irrational? Meg was right — Dara had acted out before, and eventually she calmed down and things returned to normal. And what if Dara really
was
planning to hurt herself? How could I be sure she’d hold off long enough for me to stop it? Maybe I should call the police after all. But say what? “Dara Svetcova said she loved me. RUN!” I couldn’t be sure my gut was right. Maybe I was just overreacting. And Dara would kill me if I sent the cops to her house and she was fine.

Instead, I latched on to what she’d said about stuff she needed to do. That was pretty common for people who planned to kill themselves, right? To take some time to get their affairs in order? Leave a note or whatever? My stomach twisted at the thought, but I just hoped and prayed that whatever Dara needed to do, it took her at least three hours to do it.

Night morphed into dawn — a time of day that reminded me of Dara like none other. I had seen dawn with almost no one but her, and with her hundreds of times. All those mornings I’d groused and complained about crack-of-dawn practices with her . . . Right now I’d do anything to make sure they’d continue.

I drove at exactly the speed limit — if I got stopped for speeding on top of driving without a license, I’d never get to her — and took deep breaths to fight down the nausea that rose up in me. I shook all over. And I was so thirsty I drank from a half-full bottle of warm water that had been sitting in the car for weeks.