“I love you,” she said, reaching out to hold on to my arms. “And I’m sorry if I seem overbearing sometimes. You promise you’ll tell me if you start feeling off or have any pain anywhere?”
I gave her a small smile. “Of course,” I lied. I had to. I’d caused her more than enough worry to last a lifetime, and I could see the evidence in the dark circles under her eyes that she tried to cover with makeup, and the deep lines between her brows that seemed permanent when I was around.
She lifted her hand to the side of my face and stroked her thumb over my cheek. “You’re my heart, Reid. I don’t know what I would’ve done if we’d lost you.”
The pain in her voice made me feel more than a twinge of guilt for losing my temper. I’d done that a lot lately. The psychologist I met with every week said it was completely normal to have feelings of distress after such a traumatic accident, but it didn’t excuse biting off the heads of the people who cared about me. It wasn’t like any of this was mom’s fault.
None of it’s your fault either, that quiet voice in the back of my mind tried to convince me, but I locked that thought away as Mom stood on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek.
“I’ll take you back home on the way to service.”
“Thank you,” I said, not putting up a fight, since it would be a much longer walk to my place from theirs, not to mention it was raining out.
As we finished clearing the table, the front door opened and Anna came bursting through, while my father shook off the umbrella on the porch. When Anna saw me, though, she skidded to a stop.
“Oh. Hey, Reid.” Her obvious discomfort at finding me there was a stab to the gut, and though I hated it, I understood why she was tentative around me. Of everyone, Anna seemed to have been hit the hardest by what had happened. They said when I woke up from the accident, I’d had no idea who she was. That somehow my memory of her had reverted to when she was a kid and I hadn’t recognized the teenager she was now. But of course I didn’t remember that, just like I didn’t remember the accident or anything in the months afterward. How was I supposed to apologize for something I wasn’t there for? But Anna and I had been close, despite the decade between us, and I hated that I’d hurt her in any way, hated that she was hesitant around me now, like she was waiting for me to forget her again.
“Hey, Banana,” I said, using her nickname to greet her warmly as if there was no tension in the air. “Where ya been?”
“Um. At Emma’s.”
“Yeah? Toilet paper any houses?”
“Reid, don’t give your sister any ideas,” Mom called out from the kitchen.
I let out an exaggerated sigh. “Fine.” Then I lowered my voice. “Did you sneak over to any boys’ houses and play find the cherry pop?”
“Answer that, and I’m grabbing my shotgun,” Dad warned her as he strolled back into the room and took a big bite of his rolled-up pancake.
That almost got a smile from her. “No. We went to the fair.”
“Oh yeah?” I grinned. “Did you ride the Zipper until you puked like the last time we went?”
Anna’s mouth dropped open and her hands went to her hips, typical teenage attitude position making her forget her introversion around me lately. “There was no puking. I’m seventeen now. I think I know better than to shovel in cotton candy before the ride.” Her lips twisted. “But we did ride it, like, eight times in a row.”
“Ugh, I feel nauseated already,” I said, rubbing my stomach, and finally her smile creeped up.
“Anna.” My father nodded in the direction of her bedroom. “We’re leaving in ten.”
“Yeah, okay. I’m going,” she said, trudging off to get changed for church, but then she stopped and barreled back in my direction, surprising the shit out of me by wrapping her arms tightly around my neck.
I closed my eyes and squeezed her back just as tight.I love you, Banana,I thought.
“Not joining us?” my father asked, as Anna disappeared into her room.
I shook my head. “I’ve got some things I need to get done around the house.”
He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t attempt to call me out on my bullshit. But let’s face it: we both knew I didn’t have anything worth doing at my place. It was merely a respite from the curious glances and questions, as well as from the guilt. I only came to Sunday morning breakfast to appease my mom, who would’ve honked outside my place until I came down if I’d tried to refuse.
Twenty minutes later, I was back in the apartment my parents had fully furnished before I’d even set a foot inside last summer. I didn’t feel much different now, an entire year later, than I had back then.
I hadn’t wanted to come back to Floyd Hills. Hadn’t wanted to put my teaching degree to use. I’d only gotten the damn thing as a backup in the first place, never intending to actually use it. But there I’d been, late last June. Broke as a joke from trying to make ends meet by traveling from city to city playing jazz standards to a restaurant crowd who never knew the difference between Thelonius Monk and Bill Evans.
Growing up, I always thought traveling and playing the piano for a living would make me happy. It’d been my dream for so long, but the reality had been a surprising wake-up call. I’d hated the cheap hotels, the only ones I could afford. The endless inebriated shouts for me to play “Piano Man.” I hated that even with Natasha, my then-girlfriend, by my side, I’d never felt lonelier in my life. The only thing I’d truly loved in all of it was the music. In the handful of hours I played every night, I could escape the sad reality I didn’t want to believe was mine.
God knows I tried to make it work, though, because to come home to Floyd Hills was to admit failure, and I wasn’t a failure. But one look at me during a trip up to Nashville to watch my show, and my parents saw right through my act. The promise of helping me get on my feet with a steady job, my own place, a car…it was too alluring to say no to.
Which led me to where I was now. Even worse off than I was before, because, oh hey, let’s throw in a girlfriend who doesn’t wanna stick around, a car accident, maybe a few broken bones, a brain injury…and then, when he’s supposedly all healed, let’s fuck him up real good and make him undergo surgery again. Oh, and if we can toy with his memory so that he doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not, let’s do that too.