IMAGINE US: by: Page 3

  I stepped over her legs and walked down the steps to get her water.

  As I handed it to her, she was a little more at eye level with me.

  “Elena, what’s wrong?”

  “I can’t believe I’m here and going to talk about the same stuff.”

  “I can’t believe you’re here either. It’s been… a while. How did you…”

  “You mentioned it the last time we talked,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “You were getting a place out near the lake. I might have asked around.”

  “You came here to ask where I lived?” I asked. “What kind of trouble are you in, Elena?”

  Where’s the pretty girl from high school? The one with the innocent eyes? The one who blushed all the time over the silliest things. Sure, she’s a beautiful woman now with looks that could ruin my life… but what is going on here?

  “You know Chad and I…”

  “Of course,” I said.

  Just hearing his name kicked a dead horse inside my soul that still had a few razorblade-like kicks left.

  “He’s cheating on me.”

  “Ah, fuck,” I said. I walked up the steps and sat one step down from her. I touched her hand. “I’m sorry.”

  “I just found out. Like, just now, Adam. He came home drunk. Well, half drunk. Whatever. He emptied his pockets and accidentally put his secret second phone on the table. As he was getting texts from her. And his tie smelled like her. I was just trying to write. I was just doing what made me happy. And he…”

  Her chin quivered.

  It was like being thrust back in time.

  Only now we were adults. Beyond adults.

  None of that other shit mattered. At all.

  There was no hesitation from me anymore.

  I put my arm around her and pulled her close to hold her as she cried.

  * * *

  I got Elena inside the house after letting her cry for a few minutes.

  “This place is beautiful, Adam,” she said, her eyes looking around at the high ceilings.

  “It does the trick,” I said. “There’s a little loft up there.” I pointed. “I never use it though. When I bought the place, there was a desk at the window. It overlooks the lake. I mostly use that for storage.”

  “I’m sorry about your shirt,” she said.

  I had a wet spot on my chest from her tears.

  It wasn’t the first time that had happened in our lives.

  It probably wouldn’t be the last either.

  “I’m sorry for the way I smell,” I said with a grin. “Like a greasy diner.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “It’s sort of like coming home.”

  “Coming home?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Sorry. Did you just get home from work?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “And I’m sitting on your steps. Like a long-lost dog.”

  “Nah. You’re prettier than a dog.”

  Elena laughed. “Thanks.”

  “No worries, sugar,” I said.

  The word sugar was just too easy to slide off my tongue. But that’s what Elena was to me. She was my sugar. That years old phrase suddenly coming back to haunt me worse than I ever thought possible.

  “So, did you just get into your car and take off?” I asked. “Did you pack anything up? Are you just coming here for a quick visit?”

  “What am I allowed to do here?” she asked.

  Her eyes were weary. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days, maybe longer. All I could think about was all the shit Chad used to put her through. For so many years. But that wasn’t my problem.

  Then again, she was standing in my house, so it was my problem.

  “You can do anything you want,” I said.

  “Do you have plans right now?”

  “Other than a beer and a shower, I’ve got nothing.”

  “Here I thought you’d be married by now,” Elena said with a cute smile. “Or at least lost in a world of romance.”

  I gritted my teeth. I wasn’t going to talk about myself. Or any relationships, past or present.

  “This is where I am,” I said. “And this is where you are. Chad cheated on you, huh? Anyone you know?”

  “I don’t think so. I really didn’t ask. It all just happened at once and so fast. He was so calm about it. I would have appreciated him to maybe feel an ounce of guilt. Chase me around the house. Ask for forgiveness. Give me a chance to have the power and walk away.”

  “That was never his style. Or yours.”

  “What does that mean?” Elena asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “I’m standing here in front of you, Adam. Broken. Lost.”

  I stepped closer to her and gently touched her arms. “And I haven’t talked to you in how long? I’m not sure if you remember our last conversation…”

  “Of course I remember it,” she said, shaking me away. “We were upset. We said stuff we didn’t mean.”

  “Oh, no, sugar, I meant what I said,” I said. “I would never take back what I said.”

  “Why? Because you’re the one who was right?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t want to be right, Elena. I don’t like seeing you like this.”

  “Like how?”

  “You just said it. Broken. You look like you haven’t rested in weeks.”

  “Don’t judge the way I look,” she said.

  She touched her hair. Then her face. She hugged herself and looked at the floor.

  I felt like a fool for saying anything. I didn’t mean it in a bad way. She was as beautiful as ever. Always my beautifully broken girl.

  “I need a cigarette,” she said and hurried back toward the door.

  I shut my eyes and took a deep breath, her scent of shampoo and old smoke lingering in the air.

  This had played through my head a million times before. What it would be like for Elena to just show up at my door. Heartbroken for good and needing me. I never thought it would happen. And nothing was going to be easy about it.

  Outside, she leaned against her car, smoking.

  The first time she tried a cigarette, I was there, and she coughed for ten minutes. Her face turned bright white and it was the first time she threw up in front of me. She was completely embarrassed over it, her face turning from white to red as I cleaned her up so she could go hang out with her friends and look cool again.

  I approached her.

  “I’m sorry about that,” she said again.

  “Elena, look at me.”

  She looked at me. As tired as ever.

  “You look beautiful,” I said. “You always have. You always will. What I meant is that you look tired. You look exhausted mentally and emotionally. I don’t know what’s been going on in your life since we last talked. But you came here for a reason. If anything, crash here tonight and get a good night of sleep.”

  “He doesn’t believe in me,” she said. “I don’t think anyone believes in me, Adam.”

  “Believe in you? For what?”

  “My writing. My book. Everything I want to do.”

  I nodded. “And you’re worried about what someone thinks? That’s not like you.”

  Elena grinned. She looked killer sexy as she took a drag off her cigarette and dropped it to the ground and stepped on it. She opened the back door and pulled out two bags.

  I took the bags from her and stood like a brick wall in front of her. There was an inch between us. Her back was against the open door as though she were going to fall back into the car.

  We just stared at each other.

  “What are you really doing here?” I asked.

  She swallowed hard. Her lips were thin with a little curve at each end. Her bottom lip had a perfectly straight line down the center, dividing it into left and right. It was almost unfair to see natural lips that perfect. When she was younger, she had pudgy cheeks with freckles, but now it was high cheekbones with a few freckles. In the summer was when al
l the freckles would start showing again. Her hair was dirty blonde and her green eyes were everything dangerous to my world.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she said.

  “That’s a lie, sugar,” I whispered. “And if you think you’re coming here to lie to me, then you can get back in your car and leave.”

  Her eyes went wider. “Adam…”

  “We’re not teenagers anymore, Elena. Hell, we’re not even adults at this point. We’re… well, we’re not old, but we’re sure as fuck not young.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Tell me why you came here.”

  She took a deep breath and nodded. She reached up and touched the five o’clock shadow on my face.

  “You know why, Adam… because of the promise you made to me.”

  4

  The One Thing For Everything

  ADAM

  (years ago)

  When I was twelve years old, my parents finally decided to get a divorce. It had been years of yelling, fighting, things thrown around the house, holes in the wall, one of them leaving for a night or two, and all that stuff. I also failed school twice, everyone pointing the finger at me for not caring enough, but in reality, I was just trying to survive what was happening at home.

  We had a nice house in a decent neighborhood. School was okay. I had a handful of friends and saw them mostly when I wanted to. Two good friends - Ian and Danny - lived right up the street from me. The only problem was going up over the hill meant going into a shady part of town. But Danny’s older brother always took care of things and made sure none of the older kids bothered me. He had a gun. He showed it to me once.

  My best friend lived in the rich part of town. His dad was a doctor, which came in handy when I got sick and my parents couldn’t afford to take me to a doctor. I’d go over to Timmy’s house and his dad would take me into his study and use a giant flashlight to look in my throat. He’d always make a joke by having a butcher’s knife on the desk, telling me he could take out my tonsils if need be. I wished Dr. Tim was my dad. I wished it so hard so many times, but that wish never came true.

  And when we moved, I never talked to them again. Even though we said we would, it didn’t happen. My dad left to take a job in another state and my mom dove headfirst into the world of being a single mom, working whatever job was available to pay for a shitty apartment in a shitty part of my new shitty town.

  Anything she made, she spent. Pissing it away on booze and other stuff, leaving us barely getting by, and only doing so with debt. I was too fucking young to know what all of that meant.

  Just outside my bedroom window there was a small roof with a broken gutter. I carefully had to cut and make a secret place to stash anything I didn’t want anyone to find. Sometimes I’d sit on the roof and look out to the town and count how many lights were on in other houses. Wondering what the people were doing inside those houses. If they had real families, regular families. If they were watching shows or the news. If someone was doing homework upstairs while mom and dad were in the kitchen paying bills.

  Or I’d just sit there with Brad and get stoned.

  “This will knock you out for a day, man,” Brad said as he showed me his hand.

  “No,” I said, pushing his hand away. “I don’t need that.”

  “You just like to be loose as a goose.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “I don’t even know,” Brad said. He started to laugh. That stupid stoner laugh of eh-eh-eh-eh…

  I was feeling good, like really relaxed. My head was a little fuzzy, like the morning fog rolling over the mountains, but that would pass as the rest of my body eased like my mind did.

  There was a party a few blocks away. Just across the river and up behind the park. That’s where the nice houses had been built a couple of years ago. The houses were hidden by what I called pretend woods because there were only a handful of trees before it dropped off down an embankment to old train tracks that were never used. Next to the tracks was the river. From there, it was just us losers.

  Me. Brad. Bobby. Stevie.

  “What do they do at those parties?” I asked Brad.

  “What?”

  “Other side of the river, man. What do they do?”

  “Drink cheap beer and try to hook up with girls,” he said. “Or they talk about how good they are at baseball and shit. I don’t fucking know. I don’t go that way.”

  “Nobody buys from you?” I asked.

  “Fuck them,” he said. “I hung out with Jon a few times. Thought I was taking care of him. But then he fucked me over.”

  “How so?”

  “Him and two of his friends took me up near the quarry. Said they had guys from Mid Lane coming over to meet me. Got me out of the car and… they jumped me.”

  “What the fuck?” I asked. “When?”

  “Last month,” Brad said.

  “Jumped you…”

  “They took my shit. My money. They left me.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Who cares,” he said. “I should have known better.”

  I stood up on the roof and felt my heart pounding with anger. “Fuck this place. Fuck this town. Fuck those people.”

  “Take it easy, A,” Brad said.

  “No,” I said.

  My mind flashed with images of my old town. My old life. When Timmy and I would be on the finished third floor of his giant house. We’d set up cars and action figures and then play for hours. His mom - Deb - would bring us PB&J’s that were four inches thick with both peanut butter and jelly. Name brand stuff, too. She always chewed mint gum and always kissed the top of both of our heads. I wished so hard for her to be my mom, but it never happened.

  Now I stood on a slanted roof, high as fuck, in this shitty town.

  “I hate this fucking place,” I said.

  “We all do,” Brad said. “We’ll get out of here soon enough.”

  “I’m going to that party,” I said.

  “What?” he asked, laughing in the same stoner laugh that was basically his own personal soundtrack.

  Face it, Brad was a total loser. Everything everyone said about him was basically true, but he was decent enough to me. When I called him, he showed up. He would let me buy shit off him without paying right away. And he knew where I kept my stash, so I had to keep him close, just in case.

  I walked to the edge of the roof. “You coming?”

  “I don’t think so,” Brad said.

  “See you, man,” I said.

  I jumped and Brad screamed my name.

  The fall wasn’t that bad. I just turned my ankles a little, but oh well.

  I looked up at Brad as he hung over the edge of the roof.

  “Where am I putting your stuff?” he asked.

  “You know where,” I said. “I’ll pay you tomorrow.”

  “You got it, A. Be careful, man.”

  I ignored him and stuffed my hands into my pockets and walked from the shitty apartment building I was forced to call home.

  I was high and I was pissed off.

  It wasn’t because guys like me didn’t get invited to those kinds of parties.

  It was because I knew who was there.

  And who she was there with.

  * * *

  The river smelled like body odor. In spring, it smelled like that after a good rain. But in summer, it was a constant smell, especially at night. The humidity was like a blanket of filth that hovered over the town. It was like the river was a giant toilet that someone forgot to flush for months.

  I had become mostly used to it though, just like everyone else in town.

  After crossing the bridge, I walked a dark street along the river down to the park. It was the quickest way to get to the party. Cut straight through the park and go over the old bridge. Fight through the mosquito infested brush to the train tracks. Then climb the embankment and through the pretend woods.

  The park had two giant playground a
reas and then it was nothing but baseball fields. Six in total. A paved trail went around the park, totaling a mile. And down near the river there was a second trail, dirt and rock, that went for miles.

  My mind buzzed, begging to stay relaxed, as I walked faster and faster. The sky was clear, leaving nothing but stars and the moon hanging in the corner. Like I had stepped into some cliché looking painting or something. The perfect night to just sit at the bank of the river and listen to it flow, stare at the stars, and keep fading away until tomorrow decided to come.

  I crossed a muggy field to the main trail, but kept going. I hurried down the small hill, following the sound - and smell - of the river. There I stood and watched it flow. Small whitecaps pounding against large rocks, the rushing sound sort of soothing, but the smell almost ruining it.

  I kicked a rock into the water and looked to the trees on the other side of the river.

  Right through there were the new houses. The big houses. The expensive houses. That’s where the party was. People hanging in the basement and in the backyard. Drinking, smoking, doing anything to catch the attention of a pretty girl, wondering where it would lead. The excitement of waiting for the right moment to kiss a girl. Waiting for the right moment to take things a step further. All of that bullshit that happened at those parties.

  I walked along the river, my anger easing up as the high feeling overtook me even more. Whatever Brad had given me was working. It was some damn good stuff. I felt bad for Brad that he got jumped by Jon and his asshole buddies. But oh well. I felt bad for myself for not being at that party. But oh well. I felt bad for-

  I heard a cry.

  A whimpering cry and a sniffle.

  I froze and looked straight ahead.

  It looked like every tree was swaying to their own song even though there was no breeze.

  I was just a few steps from the bridge.

  “Hello?” I called out.

  I heard the sound again.

  I took a few more steps. “Hey. Who’s there?”

  That’s when something moved. When someone moved.

  Someone stepped from the bridge.

  For a quick second, all I saw was a white dress dance and float along.

  I thought it was a damn ghost.