Still Not Over You(16)

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Five Years Ago





It’s been a whole year, and I still can’t believe Micah Strauss is dead.

It’s weird how people die. How they’re there one minute, gone the next. Making you question the when, how, and why of their existence.

That’s what it was like when I heard about Mr. Strauss. I’d seen him just the night before his end, rushing into a black car with the people who'd hired him for a protection gig. Crown Security's portfolio of celebrities and famous politicians was only getting bigger.

He looked alive. Frantic. Determined.

Then the police found him the next day, just a cooling body dumped in the grass in a park downtown. Alone. The job went wrong, and that was the end result.

But even after death, life goes on.

Steve was a wreck. Landon leaving for the army did nothing to diminish their bond, and it's like my big brother shared his pain. Eventually, he bounced back like the puppy he is, but for a couple vile months, I'd never seen him so depressed.

I was upset, too. The Strausses were like second parents to me, with Mom and Dad traveling all the time. Dad’s a legal attaché to an international firm, and Mom’s his translator. They worked domestically for a while, until Steve and I were old enough to handle them being gone.

Suddenly, Steve became more like a surrogate parent, and Micah and Shirley Strauss were our gatekeepers across the street. Our friends. Adults we could count on.

It made them feel like family, too, and it tore me up to see Micah in a casket. My parents flew in for the funeral, then flew back out again, because business doesn’t stop for death.

Everything went back to normal.

Except for Landon.

In the past year he’s become someone else. Someone I don’t recognize. Someone I don’t understand.

Deep down, I think, he frightens me.

He’s turned from my brother’s charming dick of a best friend, that boy who ruffled my hair and told me I’d have boys lined out to Seattle, into this darkly brooding creature brimming with latent violence.

Not that I think he'd ever hurt me, even now.

I just wish I could still talk to him the way we used to.

Especially since he’s supposed to be leaving soon. Iraq again. His last tour, counting down to his honorable discharge. All he does now when he's home is skulk around and smoke and glower and brush me off when I try to talk.

I’m worried about Landon.

Scared he won’t come back.

That’s why I’m out walking tonight. I tell myself it’s just to clear my head with a good breath of crisp night air, but really, I’m circling the block. Trying to work up the nerve to approach their front door, knock, and hope Landon will open up without chasing me off with my ass smarting from that whiplash tongue of his.

We live right across the street from each other. We have our whole lives. Friends for years, with Steve in the middle, and me secretly hoping that we'd always be more.

I hoped he'd take an interest after I turned eighteen. If there was ever a chance, it was dashed the day Micah died, but I'm a patient woman. And I think he's a man worth waiting for.

It’s just this year it's felt like he’s worlds away. Grieving. He's entitled to his distance, his pain, his need to heal.

I must be on my tenth circuit of the block. Must be.

When I look at the house, I can’t see any silhouettes moving against the window. No dark shape of a big prowling bruiser of a man peering through the curtains, wondering why the crazy girl from across the street is strolling past again with her eyes all wide like she’s whistling past the graveyard.

But this time, as I'm passing, I catch a glimpse of something else. I hadn’t noticed it the first five or ten times around.

A journal.

Sitting on the corner of the porch, pinned down by an empty beer bottle.

I don’t even have to look at it to know it’s his. I’ve seen him with it before on one knee; battered, black, and leather-bound. Clutched in his big hands. Protectively close.

I stop. My tongue dries to the roof of my mouth.

It's like staring into another world. How Alice must've felt gazing down the rabbit hole.

In that journal is everything he won’t say to me.

I shouldn’t.

Sweet Jesus, I shouldn’t. It’s a violation of his privacy, a betrayal, and completely against everything I am, but my heart hurts too much today. If I could just peek inside, see something that says...that says...

That says he doesn’t hate me.

That he may be angry at the world, but he won’t stay angry at me.

That he's going to be all right. He's going to get through this. And maybe someday, however long it takes, he'll start grabbing life by the throat and realize he's strong enough to bend it any way he pleases.

My palms sweat. They're so sweaty I could probably use them to wet my mouth. Ew.

Ew, Kenna. Okay.

My brain is sprinting off on rabbit tangents. I’m being weird and I’m scared and my heart is bouncing between the back of my tongue and the pit of my stomach, but I drag myself up the walk.

There’s no one around. Not even cars passing at my back.

No movement in the windows, though lights are on upstairs. I try to remember if the Strauss' front porch has a motion sensor light and can’t. Cringing, my stomach twists when I rest my foot on the top step.