There was a weight on me. Not the typical heavy, sucking weight of sorrow that I woke up with when that particular memory blindsided me, but a soft, warm weight that was whispering my name over and over again. I struggled up from the blackness and found Cora in my lap. She was literally straddling me, her hands on either side of my face. She was saying my name over and over again, whispering it against the scar on my forehead and against the twin tracks of moisture I could feel leaking out of each eye.
My baser instinct was to shove her off of me and get out of there. It was to bury the shame and sadness deep down inside and cover it with a layer of vodka so thick I couldn’t ever feel it again, but I knew if I did that she wouldn’t give me another shot, so I just stared at her and let her brush kisses all over my face until my heart rate slowed back down and I could breathe normally again. I put my hands on her waist and counted backward from twenty until I was absolutely sure I wasn’t going to bolt on her again.
“Want to talk about it?”
No, I sure as hell did not, but I had promised to let her in, so I would make an effort, and if it meant keeping her on top of me, stroking her fingers along my scalp, I would struggle through it even if it felt like it was killing me.
“Remy. I was thinking, maybe sort of dreaming, about Remy.”
If the thought of a man’s dead younger brother wasn’t allowed to move him to burning-hot, sorrowful tears in his sleep, then nothing was. I wanted to be embarrassed, didn’t want Cora to see how fractured and torn on the inside I really was, but she just watched me and didn’t say a word. The bluish green of her turquoise-colored eye was full of compassion and kindness; the melty chocolate of the brown one was much sharper, waiting to see what I was going to do now that I was naked and raw in front of her.
“The last time I saw him I was annoyed. My folks were on my nerves, Rule was acting obnoxious, Shaw was being weird, and something was going on with Remy that he wouldn’t talk about. Now I know it was his secret and Shaw was all bent out of shape over Rule, but at the time all I wanted was to get back to work. I told him to take care of Rule, not that I loved him, or that I missed him, or that I was so proud to be his brother. I just told him to keep Rule out of trouble.”
I had to swallow back the flood of memory in order to keep talking to her. She just kept her eyes steady on mine. She didn’t interject, didn’t tell me it would all be fine, she just watched me and let her fingertips run along my shorn hair.
“When I came back for the funeral everything had turned to shit. Rule decided that the best way to deal with the loss was to be even more of an ass**le than he was already. Shaw turned into this conciliatory, peacemaking machine, and my parents immediately went into blame mode. It was Rule’s fault for calling for a ride, it was my fault for not being home to keep an eye on him, and it was Shaw’s fault for letting him go. They put him in the ground and every single one of us went with him.”
I had to blink and strain to keep my eyes on her. My fingers flexed involuntarily as I tried to decide if I wanted to pull her closer or push her away.
“I went back to the desert and watched more kids die, gave more of myself to the sand and the enemy, and then when I came home last time, things went from bad to worse. Mom had turned into this grief-filled monster who wanted to eat Rule alive. Shaw was head over heels in love with him and he was oblivious and it was killing her. And then there was Remy. Gone but always there between all of us and his goddamn secret that everyone seemed to know but me and Rule. I was so mad at him. Mad at him for lying, mad at him for using Shaw, mad at him for being gone, but mostly I was so furious with myself for letting him go that last time without saying something that mattered. Maybe if I had been different, acted differently, he would have been comfortable enough to tell me about his life. It’s all I can think about.”
We sat there in silence for a long time, just looking at each other. She kept stroking my head and it was interesting to watch her thoughts play out in those odd-colored eyes. Remorse for me flashed in one, while disapproval and something else flashed in the other. She didn’t like me beating myself up over something that couldn’t be undone, but it was clear she wasn’t going to condemn me for it either.
“You don’t honestly believe that either of those boys ever doubted how much you love them, how much you sacrificed for them? Do you?”
I shook my head slowly in the negative. “No.”
“Good. Because no matter what you said to him, the words didn’t matter. He knew. Rule knows. You could have told Remy all those things, and he still would have gotten in that car that night. Losing him that way would still have you hurting and your family in disarray. You know he knew you loved him. That’s all that matters, Rome. If he wanted you and Rule to know, he would have told you. That’s all there is to it. That’s not your fault, it’s not your parents’, and it sure as hell isn’t Shaw’s. At some point you have to just let it rest.”
“I don’t know how to do that.” It was the truth.
“Is there anything that you think would put it in perspective for you? Make it easier to move past this?” I liked that instead of just letting me be all defeatist and lost about it, she wanted to actively help me figure out a solution to the problem.
“Not really. Answers would help. Asking Remy what he was thinking would help, but since none of that is possible, I’ll just have to figure it out on my own.”
Her eyes flashed at me, and I saw a shadow of something cross from one colored eye to the other. I wanted to ask her about it, but she climbed up off of me and I got distracted fighting the urge to snatch her back. I wanted to kiss her from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. I wanted to put her in bed and never let her out. I wanted to breathe her in and let her spread all that color and brightness that poured out of her all over the cold and barren that was spread around inside of me, but I was still minding my manners, so I lumbered to my feet prepared to walk her out to her silly little car and settle for a chaste peck on the lips.
I didn’t necessarily feel any better after talking to her about it, but I also didn’t feel any worse. I didn’t feel the need to guzzle down a bottle of Belvedere and I was pretty sure I could make it through the rest of the night without having to outrun the nightmares. I almost ran her over when she stopped in front of me and turned around. I had to wrap my arms around her small frame to keep her from toppling over onto the floor. She laughed a little against the center of my chest and grabbed the fabric of my T-shirt in her hands and started to pull me back toward my room.