Helena Hunting: Clipped Wings

I thought about it for a minute, struggling to verbalize. “I don’t know. Both?”

“One has to outweigh the other.”

The exclusion of a crucial truth was a sharp pain in my chest. After a long pause I finally replied, “The betrayal.”

Ironic I chose to call Chris instead of Lisa. But I knew what Lisa would say. Chris got me on a different level. We’d been here before; the circumstances had been vastly different, but some of the emotions attached were similar.

He nodded slowly, mulling over my answer. “So you feel betrayed because she didn’t tell you, or because she was in love with someone other than you?”

And that was when it finally clicked. This dead man who had been hers would always be a black shadow between us. Death immortalized people. The less pleasant parts of them washed away, leaving behind a rosy, soft-edged impression of perfection. I was so fucking far from perfect. It hurt in ways I couldn’t begin to explain. I was her rebound. Her spiral down. Her punishment for surviving, just like her brother-in-law said.

“Tenley’s in love with my dick, not me.”

Chris arched his pierced brow. “I’m going to go ahead and disagree with you on that.”

“And you’re speaking from experience?”

Chris gave me a wry grin. “No need to rub that shit in. Look, I can hang out and keep you from trashing your apartment while you get wasted, but all that’s going to do is give you a hangover and a mess to clean up. The problem is still going to be there tomorrow. You might not want to acknowledge it, but this thing between you and Tenley is serious. In all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never been like this about anyone. Are you really going to drop it all because you find out something you don’t like and you don’t know how to deal with?”

When I didn’t answer, he sighed. “Look, you’ve both kept parts of your past from each other. And for good reason. No one wants to relive that shit. I get it’s screwing with your head, but I think you need to ask yourself if it really changes how you feel about her.”

“Does it even matter? I can’t compete with the memory of a dead fucking fiancé.”

“It’s not a competition. You can be pissed at her for not telling you, but it comes down to whether or not you’re willing to walk away over it. And personally, I don’t think you are.”

“Thanks for the unsolicited opinion.”

“I thought that was why you called me. If we’re having an honesty session, I’m here because I don’t want to deal with your sorry emo ass if you make a stupid decision.”

Chris had a point. The lie and the betrayal were only a part of the problem. I wasn’t just angry about it; I was hurt. I wanted her to trust me enough to share those parts of herself and her past with me. I might not like the truth, but it was better to know than remain in the dark. Beyond that, I wanted to do for her what she’d done for me; fill the holes in my life I hadn’t realized were there. I wanted to be able to replace the memory of the person she’d lost, and I feared I never would. What an assload of revelation.

Chris’s phone vibrated on the counter. “It’s Sarah.”

I motioned for him to answer it. “Hey—” His greeting was cut off. “What? I can’t—Slow down. Are you—?”

Sarah’s voice filtered through the phone, high-pitched, frantic.

“She did what ? We’re coming.” Chris ended the call. “We gotta go to Tee’s.”

It didn’t occur to me to argue. Not with the look on Chris’s face. “What’s going on?”

“She just left with her brother-in-law.”

“It’s after midnight. Where the hell would they go?”

I pushed away from the counter, grabbed my phone, and dialed Tenley, but it went to voice mail. I tried again as we left the condo and bolted down the stairs. We rushed across the street to her apartment. The anger over the belated disclosure evaporated as Sarah came into view, standing in Tenley’s doorway. Her eyes were red, she was sniffling, and TK was curled up in her arms. The kitten let out a forlorn meow and struggled out of Sarah’s hold, bounding toward me. As I picked her up, the heavy feeling in my chest expanded.

“Where is she?” I looked into Tenley’s apartment.

“She went home.”

“What?” I moved past Sarah, inside. My brain refused to process the words. This was her home. The bathroom door was open, the light still on. Her shoes were gone, and so was her jacket.

“She’s going back to Arden Hills. She left with Trey just before I called,” Sarah replied shakily. “I tried to get her to stay, but she wouldn’t listen to me. She wasn’t making much sense. I didn’t know what to do.”

“Her car’s still out back.”

“He drove. She had a suitcase with her. She asked me to look after TK until she came back,” Sarah said. Her pity felt like sandpaper on my already raw emotions.

Unwilling to accept she was gone, I strode through her apartment. Her living room was the same mess it had been before she told me to leave. When I reached the bathroom, I stopped short. Her medicine cabinet was wide open, the entire collection of pill bottles missing. In her bedroom the closet door was open, hangers missing from the middle. One of the dresser drawers was lying on the floor, half the contents strewn all over the place.

“She left me?” That choked feeling got worse, making it hard to breathe.

“She said she needed to take care of things,” Sarah said from the doorway.

“She’s running again.” I put the drawer back in the dresser and gathered up the discarded clothes, trying to create order for the chaos in my head.

“She has to deal with her estate.”

“So she left with that dickface? Couldn’t she have done that here?”

I wished I knew more. It made sense that Tenley had an estate; she was the sole survivor in her family. There must have been things left to her; a house maybe, money. And somehow that dick Trey played a role in things.

“Why didn’t she just tell me the truth in the first place?” I picked up the tank top lying on her bed. She’d worn it last night; I’d folded it and left it there this morning.

“Maybe she wanted to protect herself.”

“From what? Me?”

“She’s petrified of losing you, Hayden. Don’t you get it? All the important people in her life are gone. You gave her a reason to feel something good again. She wasn’t going to risk that.”

“So she left?”

Sarah looked at me with such empathy that it made me want to scream. “She’s in love with you. If she hadn’t lost all of those people, she never would have met you. I think it’s reasonable for her to be a little fucked up over it.”

I hated the look on Sarah’s face, like she needed to treat me with kid gloves so I wouldn’t lose my shit. I was pretty fucking close to the breaking point. I was angry at Tenley for leaving, at Sarah for letting her go, and at myself for walking out the door in the first place.

“She has to come back though, right? She wouldn’t just leave TK and not come back.” I was reaching for a lifeboat in a sea of hopelessness.

“Of course she’ll come back,” Sarah said.

But when Tenley returned, would she be back for me, too?

“I’m gonna go home,” I said. I couldn’t be in Tenley’s space without her.

“You want me to come with?” Chris asked, hands shoved in his pockets.

“Nah, man. Thanks. I just want to be alone right now.”

When I got home, I headed for the bedroom. It was exactly how we left it; sheets a twisted mess, pillows tossed on the floor. Tenley’s half-empty wineglass sat on the nightstand, lip print marking the rim. I couldn’t believe how quickly my life had been turned upside down. It was like coming home to death all over again, except this loss was so different. Tenley still existed, but she was gone. I didn’t know when or if she would be back, and whether she would want me anymore.