Deeper

SPRING BREAK West

I wish I had a picture of what she looked like that day.

I’d told her not to come, not to get involved, but I didn’t really expect her to listen. It’s like she said to me—we’re a team, and she’s the leader.

There are guys who’d have a problem with that, her asshole ex among them. And, sure, even I threw out a token protest when she said it, but that was mostly to make her smile.

Caroline’s being the leader—it doesn’t mean I’m her flunky. It doesn’t diminish me. It’s just who she is.

I always liked that about her. How she could walk into a classroom with her books, her binder, her pens, and you could see by the way she raised her hand, the questions she asked, the straight column of her spine: She’s the leader.

It’s what makes her so awesome.

So I wish I had a picture of Caroline on the steps of the police station, and it’s not because I’ve forgotten.

Her perfect posture. The way her hair bumped over the collar of her jacket, shiny and smooth.

The look on her face, serious one second and radiant the next.

The light that came into those big brown eyes of hers when she saw me walk through the station door.

I won’t forget. I could never forget what Caroline looked like the first time I saw her after she told me she loved me.

She’s the only person who ever said that to me, other than my mom or Frankie. The only girl to give me her heart, and I hate that she handed it to me right when I was leaving. When I fucked up everything—school, my home situation, the weed, my job. I got fired from the bakery. I missed my midterm, nearly got her arrested, and that’s when she decided it was time to say the words.

I didn’t know what to say back to her. I still don’t.

I love you, too.

She knows it, I think. If she doesn’t, I was doing something wrong all those weeks we had together.

She knows it, but it wouldn’t do either of us any good to have it out in the open. If I’d said it, it would’ve been just another loss for us to carry around.

I thought about saying, You shouldn’t, but I couldn’t bring myself to say that, either.

She shouldn’t. She does. I’m glad.

More than glad, I’m greedy over it. I can’t find any piece of me—a finger bone, a molecule, a single atom—that wants her to feel different.

She’s in love with me.

Thank fucking Christ.

So I wanted that picture. Caroline, standing in the sun with our friends gathered around her. Bridget and Quinn on the steps, listening as she told them something. I’d asked Bridge to take care of her, but seeing Caroline there, I realized she doesn’t need to be taken care of anymore, if she ever did. She had those two arrayed around her and her dad in a car by the curb, awaiting her commands.

She was the leader.

Her dad pulled a few strings, got me out on probation with permission to leave the state as long as I complete some kind of drug program back home. There’s still hoops to jump through, but the public defender said the misdemeanor’s going to drop off my record once I’ve hopped on through them. The PD said I was getting a sweet deal—maybe sweeter than I deserved.

Her dad said he’d be glad to see the back of me.

I get where they’re both coming from. If I were them, I’d feel the same.

Sweeter than I deserved—that was Caroline. Head to toe, beginning to end, every day I had her.

I ought to be sorry I slept with her, sorry we got to be friends, sorry I ever walked out to where she was sitting by the curb in the dark and pulled her into my life.

There’s things I am sorry for. That I left Frankie. That I thought I might have a place in the world somewhere other than home, thought I could put down the responsibility I picked up ten years ago and trust somebody else to carry it.

I’m sorry I ever came here, because if I’d stayed in Oregon, maybe I could have kept this from happening. Kept Mom away from my dad. Kept her together with Bo, and kept Frankie tucked away safe with stuffed animals in her bed and glitter on her fingernails. I should have been there, telling her bedtime stories. Telling her she can be anyone, anything she wants to be.

That’s what’s in my power—to give Frankie that. Not to take it for myself.

I’m sorry I tried.

But I’m not sorry about Caroline. Not even a little.

I wish I had that picture, though.

Her smile.

Her eyes in the first instant when she looked up and saw me walking out, a free man.

I wish I had it, just to have something of Caroline to keep.