His head turned. I could feel his stare on the side of my head. “For what?”
Slowly, I took my gaze off the sparkling lights of the homes that were still awake and placed them on Christian. His dark brow line was heavy, his lips almost calling out to me. My insides twisted as I stared at them. “I’m sorry about your mom. I still haven’t said that since being back, and I am sorry.”
His face softened. The worry lines on his forehead relaxed. “I’m sorry I blamed you.” He shook out his hair before running his hands through the short strands. “I think after that conversation with my dad, I should have put more blame on her.”
My hand itched to cover his. “Why did you blame me?”
He let out a heavy breath, his head jerking over to the treehouse. “The night your father died, you called me. Do you remember that?”
My heart picked up its pace even with the small mention of that night. “Honestly, I try not to think about that night. Ever.”
He nodded. “Fair enough. But you did. You remember how we used to talk on the phone for hours, somehow not really talking at all?”
A small laugh escaped me as I tucked my hair behind my ears. “Yeah, I remember.”
“Well, you said your parents were fighting.”
“Talking to you always made me feel better.”
“You said your parents were fighting, and then you hung up. I kept calling you over and over again, and you wouldn’t answer, and I got worried. I asked my mom to take me to your house so I could make sure you were okay, and she said no because it was raining.”
The rain. I remembered the rain. I remembered standing outside my house with flashing blue and red lights. I was happy it was raining so no one could tell that I wasn’t crying.
I struggled with that often. I didn’t cry when my father was murdered. It was like a switch was turned off. He died, so I wasn’t able to produce tears anymore. I learned, in a group therapy session that I was forced into by a past social worker, that it was a form of shock. But still, to this day, I didn’t cry often. Which was why it was so alarming to me when I cried in Christian’s arms last week.
Christian’s voice carried me away from the past. “I was angry, so I left anyway. Got on my bike and started to race to your house. My mom followed me in her car, and then she got in a car accident right in front of me. I watched the car basically bend in half with her inside it.”
I covered my mouth, not sure what to say, but the pain in his voice made my stomach hurt.
“That’s not what killed her, though,” I whispered. “She overdosed.”
He turned his head to mine. “Yeah, and up until tonight, I thought it was the pain medication she got from the doctors that got her addicted. But according to my dad and Jim, that’s not the case. She was addicted before the crash; she just used her new injuries as a clutch for more.”
I swallowed a lump in my throat. “I’m so sorry.”
“For the last five fucking years I’ve blamed myself.”
“And me.”
He nodded, looking out into the distance again. “And you. Us. I told myself it was your fault that I left that night. I was so infatuated with you that I didn’t care about anything else. And then she got into the wreck, and it caused a spiral of things to happen, leading to her overdose.” His head dropped along with his voice. “I blamed you because I didn’t want to blame myself. Which, ironically, only made me hate myself more. I blamed us both for so long.”
I bit my lip hard. “I know what that’s like, you know—blaming yourself for a parent dying.” Christian’s head snapped over to mine so fast I was forced to meet his eyes. “It hurts and it’s heavy.” I swallowed back another lump, our stares locked and loaded with crickets chirping in the background. “I don’t like to think about it. I go back and forth with wanting to forget and wanting to remember. If I push it away, it’ll save me grief a
nd guilt, but if I push too hard, I’m afraid I’ll forget him.” My eyes somehow found my shoes. “I’m afraid I’ll forget the color of his eyes, or his chuckle when I’d tell a silly joke. I’m afraid I’ll forget the way he used to read me bedtime stories when I was little. He was a good dad.”
Christian’s black shoes somehow ended up in my line of sight, the toes of our shoes hitting each other. The pad of his finger touched the bottom of my chin and forced my face up to his. He was blurry, and it took me a second to realize that my eyes were watering. I was on the verge of tears again. Something about Christian made my walls tumble down.
I could see the gray in his eyes clearly now that we were so close. The charcoal specks glittered when he opened his mouth. “Let’s just forget for tonight, okay?”
My heart beat wildly in my chest when he dropped his hand and laced our fingers together. He pulled me behind him, leading me down the steps and onto the crunchy grass. I wanted to ask where we were going, but I already knew.
Christian climbed up the old, rickety wooden ladder of the treehouse nailed onto the tree stump, and I quickly followed, eager to be back in our safe place. We had spent many summer evenings here, playing card games with Ollie and hoarding snacks, only for them to disappear by morning when critters swooped in.
Once I reached the top peg, Christian’s large hand wrapped around my wrist, and he hoisted me up and over the edge. I wondered if it was even sound enough after all these years to be up here, but once I got one glance at Christian’s face, I didn’t care.
The treehouse could have fallen and tumbled to the ground with us in it, and I wouldn’t have known the difference. It might have even lit on fire with the way he was staring at me, and I wouldn’t have cared.
His hands found my waist fast, and he picked me up and wrapped my legs around his hips. He lowered us to the wooden floor, the old rug we had in here years ago still laid perfectly in the middle.