Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

CODY

I wander with no idea where I’m going. I’m not even aware of my surroundings. I’m too caught up in my own thoughts. Every time I blink, I’m walking through a new neighborhood with no recollection of how I got there.

I know I should call Darcy. I should apologize or at the very least, explain. But that would require understanding my feelings myself, and I don’t. I’m being torn in a million different directions. On one hand, there’s my undeniable feelings for Darcy. The kind of attention that I’ve only felt once before her. It’s rare. It’s not something to take for granted or ignore. But on the other hand, the guilt that I have for feeling that way about Darcy is eating me alive. Making me physically sick.

There was never any closure with Claudia. No conversation about what should happen if, God forbid, one of us wasn’t around anymore. She never gave me her blessing to move on. The thought of her somehow knowing that the hands I vowed would only ever touch her have touched another woman… it kills me. And I don’t know how to cope with it. I don’t know how to balance loving someone who isn’t alive anymore and trying to figure out how to love someone new.

It shouldn’t even matter. Darcy isn’t the first girl that I’ve slept with since Claudia passed. And she doesn’t want anything serious—just one fun night. But it didn’t feel like one fun night. It felt like more. The beginning of something serious and extraordinary. And that’s what’s so scary about it. I gave my heart to Claudia. I swore that it would only ever belong to her. And now it feels like I’m ripping it away and I can’t even explain why.

Refreshingly cold air bites at my skin. The pain is a pleasant distraction from the turmoil eating me up inside. I don’t know how long I’ve been walking, but I know I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. Stopping would mean going back to the resort and facing Darcy. It would mean facing my problems, and I can’t do that. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s running away. Maya is right—running away is just what I do. It’s how I cope. I don’t know why she expected anything else.

She’s known me our entire lives, and for our entire lives, I’ve run. I ran away from bullies on the playground. I ran away from home when my dad yelled. I ran away from Ohio when life got hard. And now here I am, running again. Sometimes I think it might be the only constant in my life. I never meant to make things such a mess. I never meant to be selfish. I only wanted to enjoy life, even if just for a couple of hours. And the taunt of it, the feeling of it right within my grasp—of Darcy within my grasp—won out over my morals and logic. And I really, really wish it hadn’t. Because now I don’t know how to fix it.

“Shit!” I cry out in shock when a blaring car horn yanks me from my thoughts. I blink back to reality and find that I wandered right into traffic, the car honking mere moments away from barreling into me. Luckily, it swerves at the very last second.

What the hell is happening to me ?

It feels almost like fate that, once more, my life is taunted by the screeching of wheels on the pavement. The sound haunts me. It haunts my dreams. Only this isn’t a dream. This is real. That godforsaken day in that godforsaken car on that godforsaken road has changed my life forever. I will never be the same. Every choice I make, every minuscule decision, is affected by my memories of that day. Every time Darcy looks at me, I hear Claudia’s harrowing scream for help in my ears. Every time I find myself laughing with Maya, I remember the way I used to laugh with Claudia, and how she can’t laugh anymore, but I still can. Every time I breathe, I think of the fact that Claudia is buried six feet underground and I want to suffocate right along with her.

Because God's honest truth—the worst part of it all—is that I don’t think that I love Claudia anymore. Not the way I used to, anyway. I have love for her, that I’m sure of. But I am no longer in love, and I think that might hurt me the most. When I used to think of her—think of her beautiful face and kind heart—my whole body would feel it. My heart would pound, my knees would wobble, my breath would shorten. It was like we were connected—like our souls were intertwined. It was strange just how linked we were. Whenever she thought of me, I would feel it. I would know. And she did, too. There was an infinite invisible rope tying us together no matter how far apart we were.

But the rope has been severed. Our soul connection is gone. And with it went my burning love. Instead, all that’s left is a lack of closure and the unending wonder of what things would have been like if she’d stayed. If she wasn’t taken from me.

But she was taken. She’s gone now. And I have to figure out what life looks like without her in it. That’s the one thing I can’t run from, no matter how hard I try. If I don’t face it, it will haunt me. Hell, it might even kill me if I let it. And that can’t happen because I have too much to live for. Like my little sister… and my little sister’s breathtaking best friend.

Somehow, I find myself walking into a souvenir shop. I don’t know what draws me to it—maybe the warmth of the heated insulation or the corny T-shirts in the window—but I decide to look around. I’ve got nowhere else to be anyway and maybe it will be a good distraction.

I look through the shirts and chuckle at a couple of them. They’re dumb, but dumb humor is all my tattered brain can handle right now anyway. I think about picking one out for Maya, but the timing doesn’t seem right. Maybe I’ll bring her back here before she leaves—once I fix everything that’s happened, that is.

I wander over to the knick-knacks—snow globes, pens, mugs. There’s a family—mother, father, son, and daughter—sorting through the postcards. The mother has a smile on her face as she watches her kids compare cards. The father has a smile on his face as he watches his wife. They love each other. They’re happy.

I think back to a long time ago. Back when I was a little boy in a souvenir shop with my mom and dad smiling down at me. I wonder if, way back then, someone watched me and wished for my childlike innocence to be theirs once again, just as I am doing with this poor boy. And I worry that one day, he will be the sad man in a souvenir shop, wondering where his life went so wrong—where down the line did joyous banter about what postcard to send home to Grandma become debating whether life is even worth it most of the time.

I suppose that’s just how life works. It really is just one unending cycle of joy and sorrow, of life and death. But then, it really does depend on how you look at it, doesn’t it? Because on one hand, every day lived is a day closer to death. But on the other, every new dawn is one closer to finding real peace in this complicated life, if there ever even is any.

I don’t know what compels me to do it, but I reach for my phone and dial a familiar number. I think perhaps the hopeful little boy that lives deep down inside of me has momentarily taken the reins, because right now, all I want is to talk to my dad.

“Cody?”

My dad sounds surprised when he answers the call. I suppose I can’t blame him. It’s been nearly six months since our last conversation. I’ve been avoiding his calls—my mom’s, too. I just didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want them to know just how bad it had really gotten since I left. And, man, has it gotten bad.

“Hey, Dad.” My voice cracks. I’ve barely said “hello” and I’m already becoming emotional.

I wander deeper into the store, hiding in a corner full of coats and sweaters for a bit of privacy. Although at this point, there really isn’t any point. Any dignity I once had is long gone.

My dad is quiet for a moment. I know he hears the pain I’m struggling to hide. He always could tell when something was wrong. My dad is the one person I have never been able to lie to.

“What happened?” he finally asks, his voice somehow gentle enough to come across as kind, but still stern enough to get the point across that I don’t get an option in telling him.

“I messed up,” I admit quietly, voice wavering. “Bad this time, Dad. Real bad. I can’t fix it.”

“You can fix anything if you put your mind to it, Cody,” Dad says matter-of-factly, as if repeating a mantra. “Tell me what it is. We can figure out how to solve the problem together. Just you and me. Like always.”

“I’m serious, Dad, I can’t fix this.” I’m overly aware of how desolate I sound, but I can’t seem to correct it no matter how hard I try. The pain is just overwhelming. “And neither can you. You can’t… You can’t bring her back to life. You can’t go back in time and keep me from ever meeting her. You can’t stop me from killing her.”

I’ve done something I’ve never managed to do before. I’ve rendered my father speechless. It somehow makes me feel even worse than before.

We stay in silence, neither of us with any idea what to say. I can hear him breathing. He’s afraid. I’ve scared my own father. What kind of person am I?

“I was going to marry her, Dad,” the words slip out before I can stop them. And once they start, they all begin to seep from me, like a burst of explosive water from a leaking dam. I can’t stop it, and I don’t want to anymore. “I was going to marry her. And she died. In an accident that I caused. I killed her, Dad. I killed her, and now I don’t love her anymore, and I think I must be the worst person on Earth because how could I grow out of loving someone who spent her last moments alive loving me?”

“Cody…” my dad says quietly, his voice just barely above a whisper as if he’s unaware that he said anything at all. I don’t blame him. The poor man just had the bombshell of a lifetime dropped on him. Within the span of a minute, he found out he nearly had a daughter-in-law and then that daughter-in-law died.

It must be a strange thing to hear.

“Listen to me, Cody. I may not have all the facts, but I do know you. And I know that it wasn’t your fault. If you loved this girl—and it sounds like you really, really did—then there’s nothing you could say to convince me that you’re at fault for this.”

“It doesn’t matter that it was an accident,” I spit the words out. “Whether I meant to or not, she’s dead because of me. Her blood is on my hands. I had to call her fucking mom, Dad. I had to tell her that her daughter died because I took a turn too fast on a wet road. I had to tell this poor woman that her daughter suffered for twenty minutes, trapped in a crushed car, before she finally bled out. And I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I wasn’t strong enough.”

“Don’t—”

“I’m sorry, Dad. I shouldn’t have called,” I croak, just managing to hang up before I choke on a sob. I hold my fist to my mouth and bite down on it to muffle the sounds of my cries. No one can know how bad it really is. It’s my burden to bear and my burden alone.