Page 3 of Bring You Back

“Nothing gets past you.” I turn my back on him and sit, rocking the carrier and clicking my tongue. “You like cats, right?”

Banks scoffs. “You would.”

I smile at Grumbles.

“Don’t make a lot of noise in the morning,” are Banks’s parting words right before a door slams behind me.

It’s stuffy in here, but I sure as hell am not taking my clothes off. Banks would love the show if he happens to come back through here, and this environment would love to contaminate my skin. This couch smells moldy. I wiggle my ass against my chosen bed for the night. Can you still complain about something if you’re the one who chose it?

I just did.

The jagged, white scar on my thigh calls to me, like it often does when I’m trying to find sleep. I rub it through the hole in my ripped jeans. I have another scar on my lip, and a few smaller ones on my lower legs. I don’t try to hide them, not on purpose. This is who I am—the sum of eighteen years and tragedy under my belt. You can take me or leave me. More often than not, I’ve already left you.

Julian flits into my mind, the exact way I saw him the morning before I left—hair almost as dark as mine blowing across his forehead as he stood on the sand watching surfers, his face contemplative, skateboard tucked to his side. I pinch my scar.

It’s June now. In May, on a sunny afternoon in Ohio, after I’d spent days immersing myself in all the things Caleb loved—hobbies, foods, music—to try to keep him around, I put it all away and gained a reckless streak. Disposing of everything that belonged to my dead brother triggered my breakdown. I threw myself into some dire situations because I no longer cared if bad things happened to me. The worst had already happened. It was almost relieving to have nothing and no one to worry about. Some twisted survival tactic. Anti-survival. I teetered, toed the line until guilt set in. Love is a heavy anxiety, a stress. You’re tied to the things and people you love. Then death barges in and cuts those ties, and you’re left with a new stress, an empty stress. And I tried to fill it with more things and people—toxic as they were. Guilt and anger swirl inside me, and somewhere, a sadness that hasn’t fully reached. It’s too deep, unreachable.

Bellsby is the last place I had purpose … love. Love gives you purpose and reminds you that you have a heart. I need to be reminded.

Death cuts ties, but it can tighten old ones. And I’ve stopped wielding scissors.

I walk back to the door, unable to feel my feet. I flick on the porch light and my feet finally feel solid inside my boots.

“You’ll be safe to come out tomorrow,” I assure Grumbles, my finger poking through one of the holes in the carrier. Her black paw makes contact and she flexes her toes, the tips of her nails pressing into my skin. I wiggle my finger, then eye the porch light, checking. Still on.

People like to talk about the lasts; the last time you saw someone, the last time you talked to them before you never could again, but nobody warns you about the firsts. The first morning, the first day, the first night without them. The first drive, the first dinner, the first birthday. Then the seconds come … the thirds … the fourths. . .

Nobody warned me.

I’m going to carry this around for the rest of my life.

I hold to the image of the shining porch light behind my closed lids and rock myself to sleep.

I jolt awake, my heart pounding through a sick feeling in my stomach, and my trained mind immediately takes in my surroundings. I’m at Banks’s house. A man and a woman fight on the television; she swings at him. Grumbles is curled up in her carrier. A hazy glow comes through a window, the black sky having lifted to a soft blue. It’s early. The pounding has slowed, but my pulse still beats at an uncomfortable rate—a thump, thumping that’s hard to ignore. It reminds me that I’m still alive, and that my brother is dead. It reminds me.

I sigh through the come down and eye the front door. That one look shatters my new reality.

The porch light is off.

I hadn’t turned it off; I’ve been asleep.

Caleb.He must have turned it off when he came home.

But no. This isn’t our home. This is Banks’s home. Caleb is dead.

It was merely a second, but in that second, I felt lighter, lifted by the relief one feels after waking from a bad dream, the moment you realize you’re not really living the nightmare. My stomach clenches and I want to vomit. I haven’t puked in a couple weeks. I thought I was past that stage. I dry heave at the floor.

Banks.He turned off the light, I know he did. This isnotsupposed to happen, this re-living after a false hope.Iturn off the porch light.

I scramble off the couch, the pounding of my feet now in competition with my heart. I don’t know which door is Banks’s, but I take my chances with the first one.

The light from the television illuminates a solo sleeper, a giant mound drowning in sheets and pillows in the middle of the bed.Nobody needs that many pillows.I grab one and swing it down against Banks’s head.

He jolts awake, much like I did, his heart pounding much like mine, I’m sure. “Why did you turn the light off?”

“What?” He’s leaning up, rubbing at his eyes, not even knowing what hit him. “What?”

“The porch light, idiot.” I’m seething and tempted to hit him again so he’ll feel it.

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