The Darkest Part (2 page)

As his hand inches under my shirt, I suck in a breath. “I can’t wait to marry you, Tyler Marks.”

A groan rumbles in his chest, and his hand flattens against my stomach, stopping its progression. “Shit, Sam. I forgot.”

I lift up onto my elbows. “About what?”

He shakes his head and drives his hand through his hair as he sits back on his heels. “My brother’s in town, and I promised I’d hang with him tonight. I missed his birthday last week.” His brown eyes crease at the corners. “But I can cancel.” He bounds forward, capturing my arms and bringing them above my head.

My back hits the bed, and his weight presses me into the comforter. I revel in the feel of his strong body on top of mine for a minute before the guilt kicks in. I run my hands along his back. “You haven’t seen Holden in forever,” I say through my disappointment. “You should go.”

“Yeah, I should.” He exhales against my neck, a forced breath. Then he pushes up to look at me. “I can stop by later.” He dips his fingers beneath the elastic of my pajama shorts. “Pick up where we left off . . .”

I laugh. “No. I have an early class.” I sigh, hating that, again, I’ll go to bed without him. “I should probably pass out early anyway. Tomorrow?”

“You know it.” He leans in and kisses me long and soft.

After he slips on his shoes and jacket, I walk him to the outside corridor and lean against the doorway, hugging my arms around myself against the cold. “I love you,” I tell him.

With another groan, he pivots and races back toward me, scooping me into his arms, my toes grazing the floor. “Forever,” he whispers in my ear.

Those were his last words to me.

Sam

I stare down at the orange pill bottles on my bathroom counter. Run my fingers over the white prescription labels.

Celexa. Abilify
.

Ignoring my reflection in the mirror, because I know he’s standing behind me, I press down on the childproof top and twist. The smell of plastic and new medication hits my nose, and I dump the pills into my hand. They’re white and small and oblong.

“You don’t need them,” Tyler says. “You’re not crazy, Sam. I’m really here. Those pills will just drug you into a comatose state where I can’t reach you . . . I need you, baby.”

Guilt pools in my stomach, twisting and churning. With a determined but shaky hand, I extend my arm over the toilet and slowly tilt my hand. The white pills trickle from my palm like a little waterfall, plopping into the water.

I reach over and flush.

Then I repeat the action with the antidepressant medication.

“What do you want, Tyler?” I’m a bit put out since my mom and Dr. Hartman have been extra tough on me this week. And Tyler popping up during my session today only makes it harder.

He doesn’t appear every day, and even on the days that he does, he doesn’t always speak. But his presence is constant. I can feel him everywhere. Even in my sleep. Unconscious.

Finally, I look up. He’s wearing the same clothes he had on the night of the accident. His white Polo shirt and dark denim jeans. His hair still mussed from my fingers when he kissed me for the last time.

I squeeze my eyes closed, then open them. He’s still there.

“Just you,” he says. “I always want just you.”

An ache builds in my chest and rises to my throat. “I’m here,” I whisper.

Then he’s gone.

Since he first appeared to me, three days after his funeral, I’ve researched every book in the college library, and Googled every phenomenon I could on life after death. It became an obsession.

When he started coming to me, I was frightened. Freaked out. But overwhelmingly happy, as if somehow everything that happened prior was just a bad dream and he was back. I was scared to try and touch him. Scared of what it would mean if I could . . . Scared of the returning heartache and feelings of loss if I couldn’t.

Then one day I worked up the courage. My hand passed right through him, and it was like he died all over again.

The day I heard his voice, I nearly shattered. It was the most beautiful sound, and I discovered that if I talked back, he would respond. We could have conversations again. I locked myself in my old room of my parents’ house and didn’t sleep. Didn’t eat. Didn’t leave, afraid that
he’d
leave, or that he’d forget me.

Eventually, my parents sought help. They’d given me, what they felt, was sufficient time to grieve. They thought it was time for me to go back to classes, at least, if not back to living on campus. I had to go on living, they said. Tyler would want that.

Would he really?

According to Tyler, that’s not true. He missed me, and he needs my presence to anchor him to this . . .
whatever
new reality between life and death where he exists. I hadn’t been there that night. I hadn’t been there for
him
. Maybe if I had been, he would still be alive now.

He needs me.

It’s what he always says. And if being here for him helps, then it’s what I have to do.

After months of arguing with my parents about school and life, and all the other bullshit they felt I should be doing, I cracked. I told them the truth. I can still see my mother’s shocked expression, feel it like a mallet to my gut. I terrified her.

So this is life now. My talking to Tyler when he appears, living every second of my day just waiting to hear his voice, while my family copes with having a nut-case as a daughter.

That’s okay, though. Because I have a plan again. It’s just been altered some. But I have a purpose. A forever. And if I can still somehow have that forever with Tyler—I’ll take it.

Whether in life or death.

“Sam!” my mother calls from downstairs. “You have a visitor.”

Shit.

Spinning, I glance around, searching for an escape or an excuse out of seeing whoever it is. I’ve effectively avoided all our friends from school and my best girlfriend Leah. And it’s probably her. She stayed with me the first week after Tyler’s funeral, but once I realized other people drove Tyler away, I started making excuses to be alone.

Like I do now.

“The shower?” Tyler materializes and points toward the glass-encased walk-in.

“Good idea,” I say, smiling. “Want to join me?”

A slow, sexy smile hikes the side of his face. “You know it.”

I turn the dial and then strip off my clothes. Probably not a bad idea, anyway. The musty smell of body odor and faded detergent engulfs me, and for a second, I’m embarrassed at how I’ve let myself go. But since I spend most nights awake with Tyler (his presence is strongest at night), I’m just too tired to be bothered with all the maintenance crap.

Sliding the glass door open, I fling myself into the shower with a yelp, and quickly adjust the temperature to warm. Tyler laughs. “Sh-shut up.”

As the water rains down in a wide spray drenching my hair, Tyler appears before me. I’m tempted to reach out and caress his stubbled cheek, the way I always did when we took showers together. But my hand halts mid-air. I fist my fingers and drop my arm.

I just wish he could touch me
.

He must sense my frustration, because his brow wrinkles, pain etched in the lines of his face. But true to Tyler, he doesn’t allow those emotions to own him. He purposefully scans his gaze over my body, a smile replacing his frown.

“You’re beautiful,” he says. And with a subtle movement, he lifts his hand toward my face.

I close my eyes and summon the memory of his touch.

“I want to see you content . . . satisfied, Sam.” My eyes snap open.
Content
. “Be my hands. Touch yourself where I touch.” His translucent fingers skim my arm, working their way down.

I nod and close my eyes again.

“Look at me,” he says. “Don’t shut me out.”

I do as he says, and when his hand moves across the sensitive skin of my hip, my fingers trail it. Roaming lower, I caress myself, working my body into one pulsing heartbeat—mine and Tyler’s combined.

And when the cresting pleasure takes me, I stare into his eyes. I fall against the tile, shaking. As always, after the release, the tears come. The shame. It never used to feel this way with him.

He kneels next to me. “Don’t . . .”

“Please leave,” I say.

Hurt flashes in his dark eyes. “You want me to go?”

“Not forever . . .” I hang my head. “I just need a moment.”

When I look up, he’s gone.

“That was a nice trick,” my mother says as I hit the bottom stair.

I flinch. Moving fully into the foyer, I say, “You’re always saying I should take better care of myself.”

She shakes her head and returns to the kitchen where she pulls a tumbler from the open-faced cabinet. Then she reaches for the vodka. “You could start by fixing your hair, if you want a starting point.”

With a scowl, I reach up and run my fingers through my slick hair. A thick blond streak running along the middle of my scalp reveals my natural hair color. The same ash-blond as my mother’s. I’ve been dying it black since the first day of ninth grade, and it doesn’t even look Goth or Emo. I have naturally dark eyebrows and fair skin, and with my strange yellow-green eyes, it just works.

“It wasn’t Leah,” she says. It takes me a second to realize she’s talking about the person I just avoided. This surprises me because Leah is the only one who might bother to come around. Everyone else has moved on, even Tyler’s family. Or what’s left of it.

Mr. Marks is still seeing his girlfriend (I think they’re even engaged now), and they go yachting on the weekends. She helped him through his son’s death, just like she did Shannon’s, his wife. And Holden . . .

“It was Holden,” she adds.

I freeze in the kitchen entryway. Ice forms in my stomach, and my hands tremble. “I’m going for a walk.”

Her mouth parts, like she’s going to say something else, but I turn and head for the front door. I’m sure I’ve just shocked her speechless. Normally, I don’t choose to leave the house. It takes force and a lot of threats about calling my doctor and her “team” to intervene to get me out anywhere other than my sessions.

But I suddenly need fresh air. It’s too closed-in, too stuffy in the house. And I don’t want to take the chance that Holden might come back.

I find the worn path around the pond, the same path I walked daily all my life. The path that leads to Tyler’s house. I’m not going there. It’s the last place I want to see. But the path is familiar. My feet find it without even trying. Habit.

The crickets sing around me, and for a second, I’m confused. I didn’t realize that it was almost night. I stop and glance around, then decide to plant myself right where I am. The pond is dark and placid, static. The sky and pines reflecting on its surface. Like two skies, one on top of the other.

Running my fingers over the long grass, I fall back into a memory.

Five Months Earlier

The smell of gum and wood polish assaults my senses, and slow background music with sad violins fills the air of our community church. Flowers are everywhere. The music lowers as the pastor takes his place at the podium. A blown-up black and white portrait of Tyler is propped next to an altar that holds his urn.

A closed casket was out of the question for Mr. Marks. If his son couldn’t have a proper funeral with a viewing, then he couldn’t stand the thought of burying him that way either.

Mr. Marks said Tyler’s face was beyond repair, the pavement having shattered nearly every bone. It was no longer his son.

I drop my head into my palms, unable to look at the urn anymore. Soon, I’ll have to go up there and talk. Talk about Tyler. And me. About his life, and how it was cut short. How it’s unfair, but how even in death, his memory lives on, encouraging us to live—the way he did.

It’s all written on a tiny piece of paper that my mother tucked into my cardigan pocket. She knew I was unable to write it myself, unable to find any words. She wrote it. Just one more thing I’m indebted to her for.

And I want to say all of it—to honor his memory. But the cruel irony is that he was my strength. My focal point in the chaos. The world is spinning off its axis, and I don’t know how to do any of this without him.