Unbound: (InterMix) (27 page)

And as emotionally bankrupt as he’d become, Rob hadn’t left civilized society a poor
man. He still owned his old house, earning income from the tenants who lived in it,
overseen by some rental agency.

His wife, for all the pain he’d caused her, had never asked for a quid. His words
had beaten even the hate out of her, any thirst for retribution. Or perhaps the idea
of having any tie left with Rob made her feel as sick as the guilt did him.

Whatever the reason, back in England there was still a bank balance with Rob’s name
attached to it. Probably a healthy number, thanks to interest and investments, so
much more than he could ever spend on petrol or supplies or property taxes. It didn’t
feel like his, though. He wasn’t that young man anymore, the one who’d opened those
bars. He’d left that flattering delusion behind him, with everything and everyone
else.

And now he’d be the one left behind. By Merry. He stared at the door.

He couldn’t stand to look into those eyes again—not the ones that had witnessed all
those dark things he wanted. She’d been so good to even let him be that way with her,
offered so much. He couldn’t ask her for anything more—not to smile kindly and suffer
any more of his fucking twisted damage.

He counted out bills, as many as he thought would cover the room and the minibar charges
and her wasted celebration Scotch. There was no time for a note, not even a “Sorry.”
Every second he lingered was another second in which he might change his mind, and
he couldn’t risk that.

This is the merciful thing,
he told himself, again and again and again, as he laced his boots. He kept smelling
the lotion on his jaw. How could his body feel this fucking clean on the outside,
and so rotten just under the skin?

He pulled on his jacket, shoved his scattered clothes into his pack and shouldered
it, and left the key card on the bed.

You’re a broken man, Robert Rush, not fit for this world.

He flipped off the lights and shut the door quietly at his back.

Don’t let yourself forget that ever again.

Chapter Seventeen

The door to the restaurant jingled shut at Merry’s back. She stopped a moment, eyeing
the hotel across the street, trying to guess which window was theirs. And what state
Rob might be in, somewhere behind it . . .

Only he wasn’t behind it.

Her mouth dropped open. Rob was pushing through the hotel’s revolving door, in his
jacket. She held her breath, waiting for him to look in her direction, to come after
her. But instead he turned, striding down the sidewalk with his tan canvas pack on
his back.

“Rob!”

His head twitched—a flinch—but didn’t he look her way. Merry started jogging, abandoning
the heavy paper takeaway bag as she passed a bench.

“Rob!”

He ignored her, walking fast. Faster. She crossed the street, dodging a cyclist, and
shouted again. Still nothing. Running now, she reached him, and he swiveled when she
touched his arm, spinning around as though violently yanked. There was fear in his
eyes, wild and manic. His old jacket felt so soft, gripped in her fingers. His stare
so sharp.

“Rob—”

He jerked his arm away. “Don’t touch me.” The words came out hard and cold, but then
he blinked, seeming to catch himself. “Please. Don’t touch me.”

Her fingers went to her own jacket cuffs, aching to hold on to something. “You were
just going to run out on me?”

“I can’t be here. Not another minute.”

“Stay, please. Until you’re calm.”

“I’ll never be calm. Not here. Not anyplace like this, at night.”

“I’ll be with you. We’ll be okay until the morning.”

The line drawn between his eyebrows softened enough to reveal sadness. Regret. “Just
let me go.”

“I can’t. I’m too worried now, about whether you’re okay. If you’ll
be
okay.”

He didn’t reply, and thinking she’d found a foothold and some momentum, Merry went
on.

“I get that you don’t want me to see you like this. There are some versions of me
I don’t ever want to have to introduce to anybody . . .”

Rob was shaking his head, looking away, so unmistakably denying the parallel.

“You never wanted me to see you this way—I get it. But now I have, and I’m not afraid
of you. I’m worried about you. And I still care, enough that I can’t just let you
go, knowing you’re this upset.”

Though his head had stopped shaking, he still didn’t reply.

She huffed a tight breath. “Just stay tonight.
Please.
Or let me come with you, to wherever it is you need to be, to feel safe . . .” She
reached for his shoulder, but he grabbed her upper arms—suddenly, firmly—keeping her
at a distance.

“Rob—”

“Don’t.”

She flinched at how his hands felt. Uglier emotions were welling—fear and anger and,
above all others, confusion. These hands had always been so gentle. When she spoke,
her voice sounded thin and frightened. “We got through this, the other time I shoved
my foot in my mouth and sent you running away from me. We can get through thi—”

“Don’t talk to me like you know me.”

“I do know you!” It came out shrill, and with good reason. His grip became tight,
too tight. She squirmed and it seemed to startle him. He let her go and stepped back
a pace, looking disturbed.

“I do know you,” she echoed, finding her voice. Tears were simmering behind her sinuses,
stinging her eyes. “I do.”

His eyes were hard, jaw set. “No, you don’t. That man you met isn’t me. Not anywhere
beyond that hill.”

“Yes, he is.” He had to be. If he wasn’t, who had she fallen in love with?

Again, she reached for him, but he was stepping away, retreating, and she didn’t dare
follow.

“Just let me be,” he warned, so, so cold.

She shook her head, her entire body vibrating with uncertainty and panic. “You know
where I’ll be,” she called as he turned, already twenty paces away. If he heard, he
didn’t show it.

He just left, one slow-motion step at a time, going, going, farther, farther, lost
in the growing dark between the streetlights toward the river, the bridge, the outskirts
of town, toward the hills they’d taken two days to hike.

“Don’t,” Merry said, too faint for anyone to hear. Too faint for her own ears. And
she watched the only man she’d ever really loved disappear, terrified he was exactly
right.

That she’d never really known him at all.

***

The pub was big. Dark. Short on patrons, so every tinkle of ice and clink of glass
and bark of laughter ricocheted off granite tile and old oak beams.

I know this place,
Rob thought as he slid onto a stool, eyeing the glimmering bottles beyond the bar,
their labels unchanged in his absence. Even the meaty, mustachioed barman seemed familiar,
though Rob had never drunk in this pub, nor any pub north of Glasgow, ever in his
life. Christ, this all felt so strikingly like a homecoming.

The barman delivered a pair of pints, then turned to Rob. “And for you?”

“Large gin. Something decent. No ice.”

“Right you are.” He grabbed a big emerald bottle. Tanqueray. “Saw your pack there.
You coming or going?”

“I’ve been away a long while,” Rob murmured as he watched the pour, mesmerized. “But
I’m home now.”

“Welcome back, then.”

As the tumbler was set before him, its clack against the scuffed wood knocked Rob’s
heart into gear, a finger flicking a metronome’s arm.
Thump, thump, thump, thump . . .

He stared at it, hard.
Like a diamond,
he thought, pure and clear, low light glinting off the faceted glass.
Perfect.
A perfect mistake. A perfect surrender. The perfect, inevitable end to two years’
sad charade.

He stared at it, too long.

The barman raised a brow. “That all right?”

It’s not. It’s not right at all, is it?
Rob thought, eyeing the glass. But when he opened his mouth, all he heard was—

“It’s perfect. Cheers.”

Chapter Eighteen

Merry didn’t tell a soul about Rob.

Though her dad would surely have believed her, he was a no-nonsense sort of guy. Merry’s
romantic misadventure would’ve sounded insane to him, and he’d probably have only
worried about her, going abroad on her own, taking up with some crazy alcoholic liar—that
was surely how he’d interpret the situation, run through protective, fatherly filters.

She’d have told her mother, though.

She’d have told her over dinner the same night she’d gotten home, and they’d have
stayed up until dawn drinking wine and listening to
Blue
and cursing men, crying and laughing and sighing and eating popcorn.

Instead Merry had done those things on her own, and her throat had turned achy and
dry each time the album repeated and “All I Want” came on again, again, again. Each
time she’d tried to sing along, to squeeze all his hurt out through her mouth, but
she’d wound up with hitching shoulders and a phantom knife between her ribs.

She couldn’t talk to Lauren about it . . . or had chosen not to. And none of her other
friends were right for the job. They’d never been on that confidante level, not as
Lauren had been until recently.

Why did you have to go, Mom? Why did you have to go and leave me to figure all this
shit out on my own?

But even trapped inside her, the pain had eased in time, smoothed over by the routines,
fading from a fresh and weeping cut to a bruise—dark and tender, but manageable.

She’d flown to Seattle that first weekend back. She’d cried happy tears for her dad
and Phil, wallowed in their long-awaited official union. She’d managed to forget her
own horrible, bizarre breakup for seconds at a time, then flew back on Sunday and
resumed her old life, in her new body. With her new heartache.

She’d licked her wounds through the fall, bingeing on tea and insomnia and Adele.
Occasionally on food, but only rarely, and only enough to gain ten pounds, which was
less weight than she’d expected to return once her arduous vacation was in the rearview.
She hadn’t tumbled back into her old habits, muffling all the hurt with sugar or salt.
She drowned herself in the feelings instead, a long, writhing orgy of emotions that
swung wildly between anger and guilt, regret and resentment and, worst of all, longing.
The most awful, choking longing. And that was what remained once the fury and humiliation
were burned away.

For a while, she hated that man who’d turned his back and left her behind. Just the
latest in a long line to do that—to be one way with her in private, another when the
world was suddenly watching. Was she only lovable in a vacuum? Was that it? Fine for
a secret fling-with-a-fat-girl, fine for as long as she indulged a man’s kinks in
the safety of his carefully constructed little prison, but dropped the moment the
charade fell to pieces?

But that wasn’t what hurt her the worst. It wasn’t even the secrets he’d kept from
her.

It was the fact that he’d not thought her capable of hearing them.

In the space between the mood swings, life went on.

She returned to her routines, but not her obsessive number-tracking. She stepped on
the scale most mornings, made sure she exercised five or six days a week, and kept
up with her new and improved eating habits. But she didn’t police her calories the
way she used to, didn’t watch the green digits tick up on the elliptical, waiting
to be told when she’d suffered adequately. She ate when she was hungry, and occasionally
for pleasure. She exercised until she felt spent. She saw Lauren every week or two,
and though they didn’t feel as close as they once had, they still had a good time.
They were friends, if not best friends.

Merry found her spine and demanded a meeting with her bosses, and within six weeks
she was promoted to a production manager role. It was an empty sort of coup—she made
more money and got moved from the big communal studio floor to an actual office, but
it left her in an even less creative role with the designs than she’d enjoyed as a
lowly pattern drafter.

It’d do, for now. Until she figured out what the next step was. But one thing was
undeniable. For all its colors, sounds, energy, culture . . . San Francisco had paled.
Set against that cruel palette of the Highlands—steel-gray and sage and the deepest,
blackest blues—the riotous rainbow of urban color had fallen unmistakably flat.

That cold, unforgiving landscape, the one her mother had fled like a death sentence . . .

She missed it. She missed it with a hollow yearning, like hunger. Like she’d never
expected or imagined she might.

But there was no going back, not the way she’d been seen off. And so she settled into
a sensation she knew well—living with the hunger.

***

The letter was waiting when Merry got home from work, lugging groceries. It was May,
a balmy Thursday, the air ripe with spring. She checked her mailbox inside the front
door, and her pulse spiked from nothing more than the blue and red stripes on the
airmail envelope. Perfectly typical day swept away in a breath.

She stared at the thing with alternating fear and curiosity as she walked down the
hall and up the stairs, as though regarding a scorpion through an aquarium wall.
Tap the glass. No, don’t. Go on, it can’t hurt you.

Oh, but it could. She took a mental step back from it, detaching, telling herself
it was just an object. Just any old letter.

The lie didn’t take. She’d waited too long for this. Eight months, nearly.

So that’s what his writing looks like.
So he’d touched this envelope, addressed it, sealed it, carried it to a mailbox and
watched the slot swallow it, feeling . . . what?

She set the envelope on the coffee table, putting all her groceries away, changing
into lounging clothes, starting a load of laundry in the basement. She puttered and
made dinner, watched bad TV, and didn’t find the balls to open the thing until her
third glass of wine, a few minutes shy of nine o’clock.

Good job, genius. Way to get drunk in order to face reading news from your cripplingly
alcoholic ex-lover. Slow clap for you.
She pushed the glass to the far end of the table.

Curling up under a blanket, she wedged herself into one corner of the couch. She ripped
the envelope gingerly, worried that too aggressive an exposure might somehow scare
Rob’s words off the page, send them fluttering to the floor in an unreadable mess,
lost forever in the carpet pile. It all felt very delicate.

Gently, she unfolded two sheets of lined paper covered in small, neat lettering in
blue ink.

Neat.
Did that mean sober?

Before she read a single word, she tried to picture him, penning this. At his kitchen
table, surely, having procured this long-unused pad of paper from some shelf, maybe
gone to his car to even find a pen.

Or maybe not. Maybe he was a list-maker, like her. The things she didn’t know about
this man . . .

“Okay,” she said through a long, reedy sigh. And she read.

Dear Merry,

I hope this letter finds you well.

I needed to write first and foremost to apologise. I’m sorry I acted like such a colossal
arse when we parted. I know you were only trying to help me that night, but I was
frightened. That’s no excuse, but it’s a reason, I suppose. I’m sorry.

What we had together was special, to me—so special I have no adequate words to describe
it. I hope perhaps the better moments stand out as clearly in your memory as they
do in mine, and that my behaviour the night we said good-bye—or rather didn’t—hasn’t
ruined them.

Merry pictured her camera, wrapped in Rob’s yellow tee shirt and stashed in a shopping
bag on her closet’s top shelf. Not ruined, no. But frozen. Frozen like his face in
that photograph, the one she’d been too scared to even glimpse. She looked back to
his words.

I haven’t had a drink—

A homely noise rattled from Merry’s chest, the sound of dread escaping to make room
for deeper breaths. For relief.

Not that night or any night since. I’ve been staying in Inverness for a while now,
getting myself sorted. I think I’m doing fairly well . . . I’ve technically been sober
for close to three years now, though in truth my recovery never really started until
last autumn, and now in earnest, since the late winter when I moved.

I know hiding away in the middle of nowhere wasn’t really fixing anything that’s wrong
with me, merely procrastinating the job, so I’ve begun trying to make a proper go
of sobriety. It’s not been easy, but I do think it gets less difficult, week by week.
I don’t feel in danger of relapsing lately, not the way I did most nights, when I
first made the move. Sometimes if I feel especially unsettled, I’ll go out to the
cottage for a few days. This probably makes the other regulars from my AA group nervous—
here he’d added a smiley face—
but it does me good to get out of the city and clear my head, and tend to the property
and so forth.

She paused to smile at that, her heart yanked back across the ocean to the cold, majestic
Highlands for a blink, her body still curled on this soft couch, in this warm little
apartment.

I won’t bore you much more with my life—recovery is nothing if not dull—but I wanted
to say I’m sorry. However much you need to read those two words to believe them, pretend
I’ve written them here twice as many times. You treated me with more kindness and
affection than anyone ever has in my life, and I was a bastard to push you away. I
hope it didn’t sour your entire trip . . . but perhaps I’m giving myself too much
credit.

I miss you every day. Hearing your voice, seeing your beautiful face and your smile.
Holding you, smelling you. I hope these don’t sound like some stalker’s words—just
those of a man who misses a woman as he hadn’t realised he could.

Merry paused to pinch the bridge of her nose, too unsure of what she was even feeling
to let herself cry.

I told you in Inverness that awful night, you hadn’t met the real me, off in the hills.
But I know now you did. That man was me, at my chemical best. Calm and content, if
cowardly. Here in the city I’m not always so charming. I get anxious and sad, but
I suppose that’s most any human being’s lot. I’m learning to simply be that way, to
sit with those feelings, as some of the people in AA say, without trying to drown
them in a glass. It doesn’t feel good, but then, that’s life. Being drunk never really
felt all that good, either, so I tell myself I’m not missing much.

I’m dawdling now. I could have said all this in three lines, on one of the postcards
you gave me.

I fucked up and I’m sorry.

I’m sober.

I miss you.

I considered making a grand gesture of a trip, flying across the world to find you,
say these things in person . . . But to be honest, I was afraid to risk my trajectory
with the sobriety, should things not go well, leaving me stranded in a strange city.
And also because it felt intrusive. I haven’t the faintest clue how you feel about
me—if you feel anything at all. This seemed the safest way of saying all this. Spineless?
Perhaps. That’s been my MO before. But I promise I was aiming for respectful.

I’ll close with an invitation, one with absolutely no expectation attached, no pressure.

If you feel for me—enough to forgive me or even just enough to come and slap me in
person—please come back to Inverness, someday—
here he named an intersection, and Merry scoured the map in her memory, trying to
place it.
Any Tuesday, between noon and one. Next week or a year from now, whenever you’re ready.
My address may be changing shortly and I haven’t got a phone—I’m still trying to keep
my life as simple as possible—but my box at the post office is on the envelope, and
my best guess at the airfare is enclosed—

“What the fuck?”

She grabbed the envelope and felt inside, sliding out a money order for two thousand
dollars. She blinked at it. What in the hell kind of hermit was this man? Too overwhelmed
to contemplate it, she slid it back in the envelope and set it aside, picking up the
letter.

Write to arrange a date if you like, or to tell me to fuck off. But unless I hear
from you, I’ll be waiting every Tuesday, hoping maybe I’ll see you walking toward
me down the pavement. I’d give anything for a chance to say all these things to you
in person. If you ever find you’re willing to hear them.

Wishing you all the best, whatever you decide. You’re the loveliest person I’ve ever
had the good fortune of knowing, and you deserve all the happiness in the world.

With much regret and hope, and love,

Rob

***

She didn’t do a thing for weeks. Didn’t write Rob back. Didn’t touch the money. She
didn’t book any flights, certainly, but neither did she throw away the contents of
the envelope.

She read the letter a hundred times. In the morning, late at night, while wearing
Rob’s old shirt. She’d brought herself to look at his photo, and once the floodgate
was open, she soon viewed it so often her camera battery died. She charged it and
sent the photo to her phone. She zoomed. Those blue eyes, held in her hand . . . but
in actuality, so far across the land and sea.

And so on a Sunday in early July, aided by an overcast, three-hour walk and absolutely
no alcohol, Merry returned home, opened her laptop, and booked herself another trip
to Scotland. San Fran to London, and a sleeper train to Inverness. A flight north
cost about as much, but she could use all those hours to think, meditating as the
fields slid by, then the lakes, then the mountains.

She packed light, enough clothes for a five-day, four-night trip. She’d arrive in
Inverness on the last Tuesday in July at eight thirty in the morning, and if she was
lucky and scored an early check-in, that left enough time to shower before getting
to Rob’s appointed corner. And if he didn’t show, that would still give him three
days to find a note she could leave in his post office box, with an appointed time
of her own.