Page 91 of Beautiful Lies
“Do you think that’s why your mom left? Because of your dad?”
He shrugged. “That’s what I always thought.”
“Do you still think about her?”
“Sometimes. Not as much as I used to. When I was a kid, I had this fantasy that I’d rescue her. Sword fight to the death to keep her safe. Like she was the queen and I was her loyal knight.” He laughed, but it was only to cover up his hurt. “Stupid kid.”
“None of this was your fault, Connor. You were a victim—”
“I wasn’t a victim,” he said, his voice angry. Victim was the wrong word choice. Such a weak word. “It didn’t matter how or why it happened. I’m still the guy responsible for bringing those men to our house. I’m still the guy who took off for Miami without telling anyone where I was going. The details…they don’t change any of that.”
But the details changed something for me. He hadn’t been running away and he hadn’t bought those drugs. Why hadn’t he stood up for himself? Why hadn’t he told me that none of it had been his fault? I thought about those engagement rings. Vows and promises. That stupid Tammy Wynette song. Maybe he’d wanted me to stand by him no matter what he’d done. Love him for better or worse. Because his mother hadn’t. And God knew his father hadn’t. I used to believe that I’d have the strength to stand by him, to be there for him, even when he was at his lowest, but maybe I’d failed him as much as he’d failed me.
“This story makes more sense to me though,” I said. “You’d go to jail before you’d snitch.” Connor had very little respect for authority figures, so it would have taken a lot of persuading to get him to cooperate with cops, dirty or otherwise. I side-eyed him, wondering what they’d done to coerce him into acting as an informant. If they’d tried to bribe him with money, he would have told them to go to hell. “What did they do to you?”
“Babe … you don’t need those details. It doesn’t matter anyway.”
I sighed loudly. “Which details do I need? Because it feels like you’re leaving out a lot. Stop trying to protect me from the truth. I can handle it a whole lot better than empty promises and lies. I’m just … don’t sugar-coat the truth, okay?”
He worked his jaw then nodded as if he’d made up his mind to tell me the important parts. “I didn’t come straight back to Brooklyn. After I left Miami, I traveled for a few weeks.”
“Where did you go?”
“Everywhere and nowhere. I hitched rides.”
God, he really was like Kerouac. It sounded reckless and dangerous, but maybe he hadn’t cared about the risks after everything that had gone down in Miami. “Who picked you up?”
“Mostly long-haul truckers. Guess it gets lonely driving all those hours. I don’t know. Some talked. Some didn’t. Sometimes I slept for the whole drive. For the last leg of it, I hopped a Greyhound to Port Authority. And I got out at the station, thinking it was time to go home but I wasn’t ready. My head was in such a bad place. So, I took the Jitney out to Montauk. I spent a lot of time thinking about those four days we spent out there.”
“Our first vacation.” And our last. It was the summer we were nineteen and we’d stayed at a campsite. I’d still been in denial about the extent of his addiction. We were supposed to be there for a week, but Connor had only made it through four days before he’d needed a fix. He made up some bullshit excuse for needing to return early, and as soon we’d gotten back to Brooklyn, Danny hooked him up and he’d disappeared for two days, tarnishing my beautiful memories of Montauk with the ugly reality of addiction. What had stuck in my mind was that our four days in Montauk had been idyllic. Amazing. Yet it hadn’t been enough to keep the demons at bay.
“I hated myself for what I did to you,” he said, his voice cracking on the words. Instead of rushing in to tell him it was okay, I stayed silent and listened, knowing he wasn’t finished yet. “Remember that beach we went to? Right in front of that house on the cliff? It was quiet and we felt like we had it to ourselves?”
I nodded. I remembered. Farther down the beach, it was crowded with people from the hotels and condos and we wondered why everyone wanted to be on top of each other. I envisioned our strip of beach, the sand so soft and white, the sky as blue as Connor’s eyes. We’d stayed on that beach all day, our skin hot, the sea cold, and the surf wild. At night, after grabbing food in town, we’d come back and lie on the cool sand, stargazing, the sound of the waves crashing against the shore. Connor knew all about the stars and could trace the constellations with his fingertip.
“When stars die, they collapse and explode, leaving a black hole behind.”
“So, we’re all made of stardust,” I said.
We’d reached my apartment building, but we stayed outside in the November cold and sat on my front steps, side by side, only inches apart but not touching.
“One night I walked into the ocean,” he said, and I had the feeling I wouldn’t like this story so much. “I swam out past the breakers and the plan was to keep swimming until I got too tired to swim anymore. My arms were tired. I didn’t think I could go any farther. And I was ready to just let myself go, sink into the water. Into oblivion. But it’s the craziest thing … I heard your voice.You are loved, you said.”
The sting of tears pricked my eyes. A hand rising from the ocean. Just one hand. A cry for help.
“I floated on my back for a while and then somehow I made it back to the shore and lay on the sand. I watched the stars … and I thought how tiny and inconsequential we are compared to the universe. I thought about the last time we’d been in that same spot, watching them together. My girl made of stardust. And I thought about those glow-in-the-dark ones I stuck on the ceiling for Killian and how you could only see them when it got dark.”
Tears streamed down my face and oh, my heart, it hurt.
“And I thought maybe…just maybe…I’d be able to find my way home and back to you. I could be your Odysseus.”
Oh, Connor. Why did you always have to break my heart? Connor wrapped his arm around me and I buried my head in his chest, my tears falling onto his leather jacket, his hand stroking my hair so gently it made me cry harder. I cried for him and for us and all that we’d lost. I didn’t even know what exactly I was crying for except that I couldn’t seem to stop.
“Do you believe in soul mates, Connor?”
“How could I not? I met mine when I was fourteen.”
Ten years of memories, the good and the bad and the ugly and the beautiful, so many beautiful ones, played out like a movie in my head.
