With This Heart(45)

I felt guilt like a red hot iron branding my stomach. I’d left her in that hospital room so that I could go on a dumb road trip with a dumb guy who didn’t f*cking matter.

“ You let me go!” I cried. “You TOLD ME TO GO!”

How dare she decide what was best for me. She didn’t want to show me her sickness? She wanted me to live? I’d f*cking show her. I picked up rock after rock, stepping closer to the urn and chunking them as hard as I could.

“ YOU’RE A COWARD!” I screamed toward the desert sky. “I hate you! I HATE YOU!”

She told me to go on a road trip when I should have been with her. I should have been there to give her ice chips or for comedic relief. I would have done anything, truly anything, but she didn’t let me. She was being selfless, anyone would have agreed. But in that moment I had to believe she was actually being selfish or the guilt of last night would be too much to bear. She was dying and I was having my first orgasm. She was choking on her last breath and Beck was helping me spread ashes that weren’t even f*cking ashes!

I heard rocks crunch beneath Beck’s weight behind me and I turned toward him. “You know what was in that urn?”

He just stood there, trying to gage my emotions as best as he could. It pissed me off that he wasn’t as angry as I was. His hands were shoved into his front pockets and his eyebrows were scrunched together in concern. There was pity etched across his features and I wished I could wipe it off and replace it with something else.

He never answered. “Well I’ll tell you anyway. I burned up old medical pamphlets, instructions for medications, preparations for the transplant, guides on how to prolong life with a debilitating heart condition. I burned everything up and shoved it in that urn because I wanted to be poetic and dramatic. I wanted to shed my old skin and move on from my old life. But you know what? While I was gallivanting around the country dumping burnt-up paper, my best friend was dying!”


“ Abby.” He moved to step closer to me, but his touch would have seared my guilty flesh. I didn’t want it.

“ I’m alive and she’s not. Caroline died because nothing in life is fair.” I looked up into his hazel eyes. They were staring back at me with such conviction. “She was a better person than me. When we first met, I wanted to ignore everyone in our support group, but she came over and sat next to me. She kept asking me questions and forcing me to answer. I thought she was weird and overly friendly. I made fun of her in my head. The nurses and doctors all loved her. Everyone who knew her fell in love with her.”

“ She didn’t deserve to die,” Beck answered for me.

“ I did,” I muttered toward the ground.

“ No one deserves to die over other people.”

I scoffed, thinking of all the serial killers that clearly deserved to die instead of good people every day. “Let’s go. I have to go home.”

I shoved past him and headed for the Camper. I wanted to be home. I needed to be home. I should have never left.





[page]CHAPTER SIXTEEN





I hardly remember our journey back to Dallas. We drove straight there, stopping once for gas and a bathroom break. I’d broken down in the dirty bathroom stall, crying tears that I was too stubborn to shed in front of Beck. I collapsed on that disgusting floor, trying to make sense of life. I stayed in there for so long that eventually an attendant had to come bang on the door and demand that I let other customers use the restroom. Her palm shook the cheap plastic door and I wondered if the stall could collapse on top of me. The only thing I decided in that bathroom was that I didn’t want to live in a world without Caroline.

Beck didn’t mention anything when I got back into the car with puffy eyes. He put on a podcast of ‘This American Life’ and gave me my peace. I didn’t want to talk about it; I just wanted to wallow in my sadness and guilt. Empty landscape morphed to urban sprawl and concrete. We drove straight to my apartment without a word. He helped me bring my luggage up, and then we stood in the threshold of my apartment in silence. My throat was tightening up and tears burned the back of my eyes. I clenched my teeth together as a last stitch effort at remaining composed.

“ Do you want me to stay?” Beck asked. His dark brown eyebrows were tugged together and his hazel eyes had lost all of their joy. He looked like he had in his MIT ID photo. My jaw tightened even more and I swallowed past the lump in my throat.

“ No,” I answered, keeping my eyes locked on the door jam.

“ Are you sure?” he asked. I wanted to yell at him, to take my anger out on something, but I just mumbled a yes.

He nodded slowly and then inched backward. “You did the right thing,” he said before turning on his heel and fading down the stairs. I pressed the door closed and then slid down onto the linoleum, wondering what he meant by that. Did I do the right thing by leaving Caroline to die? By coming home when I found out she passed away? By telling him to leave? By taking a road trip with a stranger?

I had no clue how to get beyond the questions. They were suffocating me from within. My apartment felt like a furnace, so I got up, grabbed my keys, and left.

Once I was in my car driving toward downtown, I dialed my mom.

“ Sweetie, are you home?”

“ I just got back,” I answered, putting my blinker on and changing lanes to enter the highway.