The Lie(64)

“I am so, so sorry,” I cry out softly, putting my hand on his. My soul weeps for him, the guilt overpowering me once again.

He looks at me with hard eyes. “Don’t be sorry, Natasha. They died. And that’s independent of you. It’s independent of us. I’m learning how to separate the two.”

He makes it sound so easy but from his strained brow, I know it’s anything but.

“But,” he goes on, “I couldn’t quite pull myself out of it right away. I lost my job at the university. I lost most of my friends. The suicide didn’t work but in some ways I was still trying to make myself as dead as possible. I barely ate. Barely slept. I was barely anything. You wouldn’t have recognized me. I was just…a ghost.”

I’m staring at him open-mouthed, reeling for him. Reeling for me. The wounds are too fresh and new. “So was I.”

“So tell me,” he says, passing me back the cigar. He looks me over, like a puzzle he’s trying to piece together. “How did you get on after?”

I turn the cigar over in my hands, taking in a deep breath. I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about it but if I can’t be ready with Brigs, now, I’ll never be ready. “I think…it’s hard to talk about it. Not because I’m afraid, or it’s too painful, even though it is painful and I am afraid. It’s just that, I had two things competing for my sorrow. I had the guilt of their deaths…”

“I wish I never said those things to you,” he quickly says, voice choked. “There’s not a day I don’t regret it, putting the blame on you. I was…”

“You were in shock and you were in pain.”

“Don’t make excuses for me.”

“Don’t find something else to feel bad over,” I tell him. “It’s not an excuse, it’s just the truth. I don’t blame you. I would have probably said the same, I would have gone mad with grief. I would have lashed out at anyone. It’s just that you…you f*cking broke my heart, Brigs. You gave me guilt and you broke me in two. I was dying from both.”

His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat as he swallows hard. “I’m so sorry,” he says thickly.

“We’re both sorry, Brigs,” I tell him. “That’s why I don’t want us to talk about it more than we have to. We’re f*cked up. Sincerely, completely f*cked up.”

He sighs and looks back at the sea. “Aye.”

“Anyway,” I tell him after a few beats, taking a quick puff of the cigar, feeling my lips buzz. “I dropped out of school and I went to France. My father seemed like the only person I could go to, you know? My mother wouldn’t have given a shit about me in LA. She still barely contacts me and I’ve kind of stopped trying. But my father, I knew he would help me. And you know what? He did. I went to Marseilles and lived with him and his girlfriend and tried to live again. I learned French. I got a job cleaning boats during the summer. I even went to a therapist, in French and all. There was medication and a lot of setbacks. I have bad panic attacks from time to time. But slowly I pulled myself out of the hole. And…I did everything I could not to think about you.”

He looks at me, frowning.

“You,” I explain, “were my downfall. Eventually I was able to get through the day without thinking about death, without blaming myself. But you…you were something I pushed out of my head. And it worked. I moved on.”

“Until you saw me,” he says softly.

“Until I saw you,” I tell him.

“Well,” he says with a heavy sigh. “This is the worst date ever, isn’t it?”

I can’t help but smile. “In a way. But I’m with you. You’re worth everything.”

“Even though I’m the man that ruined you?”

I wrap my hand around his. “I wouldn’t want to be ruined by anyone but you.”

“Thank you,” he says.

“I mean it. Brigs, you destroyed me. But you’re also piecing me back together. If I hadn’t found you again…I don’t know if I would ever feel the way that I’m feeling right now.”

“Reliving bad memories?”

“No,” I say softly. I clear my throat, feeling too many emotions swirling around. “I’m happy.” I pause, trying to explain. “It sounds so simple, I know but…”

“I’m happy too,” he says, giving me a quick smile. “I know exactly what you mean. It’s not simple at all, Natasha. It’s everything.”

He pours more wine in our cups and raises his in a toast. “To us. To everything.”

“To everything.”

We drink. We smoke. I lean against his shoulder and watch Winter play in the surf. We talk. I tell him my plans for graduation, that I’d like to start writing screenplays and probably not use my degree at all, he tells me ideas for future books. We discuss movies. We discuss actors. We discuss Europe and vacations and the French. We discuss Professor Irving and how much we both don’t like him and we discuss Max the bartender. We even discuss aliens, briefly, as we grapple for the best alien movie (his: Prometheus. Me: Aliens).

Eventually the sun sets and we take a walk along the beach in the lavender twilight. We weave between the white chalk monoliths and I drop to my knees, taking him in my mouth and making him come right there on the beach.