Jessica Martinez - The Vow

“We had to,” Annie repeats.

“Oh, Annie.” Her eyes become glassy. Finally. She blinks, and a line of tears rolls down each side of her face. “You didn’t have to. Maybe you think you’re in love, but you don’t even know what love is.”

“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself ?” Mr. Bernier roars at me. He’s not jabbing the finger anymore, but he’s flexing his fists and then shaking them out, flexing, shaking, flexing, shaking. “Do you even love her?”

“Yes.” I risk the unauthorized speaking, because if I need Annie’s permission to answer that, they aren’t going to believe anything I say. Besides, it’s true. “I’ve always loved Annie.”

“If you loved her,” he spits, “you wouldn’t have married her without her family’s permission. You wouldn’t want to take her away from the people who love her most. You wouldn’t want her all for yourself. Maybe that’s what you Muslims do, but here in America we don’t need to isolate our women just to force them into loving us.”

“No, of course not. You just isolate them from yourself and from everyone else so they don’t feel any love at all. So they’re looking for the first opportunity to escape and find someone who won’t hold them at arm’s length, someone who’ll actually love them.” I look at Mrs. Bernier. Then Annie. “Isn’t that right?”

The roar of drama is suddenly gone. The silence is cold and smells like lemon Lysol. The Hulk’s veins are still throbbing, but his face has gone from red to white. I wonder if he’s having a heart attack. This is why I’m not allowed to talk.

“Get out,” he says.

I turn, not feeling anything but the shrillness of that silence, and Annie turns with me.

“Not you,” he says. “I’m talking to him.”

She doesn’t turn around but puts her hand over mine on the doorknob. “I’m going with him.”

“Annie, no,” pleads Mrs. Bernier, and the sudden panicky shake in her voice makes me think of my mother. Against all odds, at this moment of all moments, I miss her. I feel like I’m little, and I’ve been unfairly picked on, and I just want to curl up in her lap and cry.

“I almost forgot,” Annie says softly, reaching into her purse and pulling out her car keys. She puts them on the glass table with a clunk that rings like chimes. “I don’t want these.”

And we leave.

Annie

We leave and I make it to the car. I don’t think I will at first. The softness in my knees and hips is spreading up and down my legs, and with every step down the driveway I’m surprised my joints don’t give out completely. Something is melting—cartilage? ligaments? bones?— and I’m liquid, warm and woozy, by the time I drag my body into the passenger seat.

Mo’s hand is shaking as he puts the key into the ignition, and he won’t look at me.

I put my head between my knees. “I told you not to talk.”

“I know.”

“You shouldn’t have said that.”

“I know.”

“I was hurting them enough on my own. They didn’t need that from you.”

“Maybe I have Tourette’s,” he says. “Except instead of screaming obscenities, I scream totally true things that I’ve been thinking and not saying for years.”

I press my forehead into my knees. Totally true things. Is that why what I’m feeling right now is not exactly sadness? It’s definitely not what I felt after I told Reed. That was a squeezing dark pain, purple and scarlet and black. This is opaque blue and ice-cold. I’m a little free.

If it wasn’t for that last over-the-shoulder glimpse—Dad’s face crumpling, Mom’s features permanently pained, with her eyes closed—I’d almost feel okay.

Our evening isn’t terrible. Not at all. I make grilled cheese again, Mo heats up a can of tomato soup, and we eat in front of the TV and drink our soup from mugs because Mo thinks it tastes better that way. It’s no gourmet feast, but when we’re done there are only golden crumbs on my plate, and my lips are buttery and warm. Even after I have food in me, I’m too drained to get off the couch, so we watch three episodes of Arrested Development , followed by Footloose (the newer one), which Mo pretends to hate.

“I’m going to bed,” I say, finally dragging myself off the couch. “Your sheets are in the dryer.”

“Oh, yeah. I totally forgot. Thanks for washing them.”

“You’re welcome,” I say. “Thanks for getting control of yourself and not killing Duchess.”

“I regret it already.”

“And thanks for coming with me,” I add.

“So much better than waiting for him to come here and kill me in my sleep. Wait, he could still do that, right?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think he would.”

“Very reassuring.”

Instinctively, I reach for my phone to check messages before I remember I turned it off after we left their house. “I think maybe I want to give my phone back to them,” I say, thinking aloud. “Do we have enough money to get me one? Maybe a pay-as-you-go?”

“I think so. Let’s figure it out in the morning.”

“Okay. Good night.”

“Good night.”

The bed is soft, but the pillows are too thick, like overstuffed balloons really, so my neck is arched up at an angle and my body feels like it’s hanging from my head.

Or it could be the guilt that’s keeping me awake. It’s like I’m clenching an ice cube in my fist. It’s cold and it’s burning me, but I can’t let go, and the ice-scorched skin feeling is too intense to let me fall asleep. I’ve got so many people to be sorry to.

And then there’s one tiny sliver of guilt scraping away at me from the inside too. It’s small and unexpected, but it’s the only one I can do something about. I slip out of bed and open the door. From the doorway, I can see the back of the couch and a single foot dangling from the end.

“Are you awake?” I whisper.

“Sort of,” he answers.

I swallow, wishing he was one or the other—awake or asleep—so this could matter or not, no guessing. “I’m sorry about what my dad said to you.”

He yawns. “About wanting to kill my dad, or about me being a lying little snake? Wait, he called me a bugger too, didn’t he? I would never do that, by the way. That’s disgusting.”

“About calling you a terrorist.” I wait in the doorway, feel the cat slink between my legs, then back into the room. “He didn’t mean it. He was in shock. Not that that makes it okay, but I don’t think he usually thinks things like that. He definitely doesn’t say them.”

Mo is quiet. The cat glides a figure eight around and through me again.

“No worries,” he says finally.

“Okay.” But it’s so not okay.

Back in bed, the pillows are still too big, so I use a bunched-up hoodie, which is too small, instead. As for the ice cube of guilt, if it’s even possible, I’m starting to numb. It’s still there. But it’ll be there tomorrow.

Duchess stretches herself across the foot of the bed and I’m suddenly jealous of how easy cat life is. She does what she wants, when she wants, where she wants. What I want, when I want, where I want—I don’t even know the answer to one of those. Or maybe I do. Reed. Now. Here.

I shove my face into my hoodie-pillow and wonder what he’s doing. Sleeping, probably. I hope he’s still mad or sad, or whatever emotion his grief storm settled into. That makes me a terrible person, but since I’m already a terrible person, I may as well admit it. I want him to be as gutted as I am. To think I could slip from his thoughts like I was never even there, just a meaningless summer fling with some high school girl, makes me want to curl up and squeeze myself until I disappear.