Page 13 of Salvaged Heart

13

BECKHAM

JULY

T he sky exploded with reds, blues, pinks, and greens, raining showers of fizzing yellow light down all over the lake. I watched the fireworks out the window in Anders’ room. His head, topped with a mop of slightly matted brown curls, lay on my thigh. When he woke again, I would make him shower and help brush out the worst of it, but for now, I was content to comb my fingers through the sections that would allow it.

I’d come up here to see if he felt good enough to sit on the shore of the lake and watch the celebrations together, but to my dismay, he’d been like I found him most nights—in a fitful sleep, half knotted up in his blankets and drenched in sweat. Some nights, he would cry out for hours. Others, he would toss and turn, tears silently rolling down his cheeks. For all of them, I laid next to him, trying to hush and soothe away the worst of it. In the mornings, I would wake to him pressed up against me, arm thrown over my body, clinging on like I was his last lifeline. I would extricate myself from under him, slipping back to my mattress on the floor before he woke.

We didn’t talk about it.

There was nothing to say.

The days that followed his confession had been long and hard. Each morning, I coaxed him out of bed with coffee blacker than tar and attempted to force food down his throat, most of which he threw back up within the hour. We attended AA together and sat much like we had the first day, silent and hand in hand, Anders fidgeting with a silver chip someone had pressed into his palm on his second visit.

Twenty-four hours sober.

He'd dismissed it as not an accomplishment, but the fact that he carried it everywhere with him told me otherwise. Multiple times a day, I glanced over and caught him staring down at it like it was the greatest thing he’d ever owned.

He had yet to speak to the group, but the other members were kind to him, stopping by to check in and slip their phone numbers to me in case we needed anything. One woman in particular, Kara, had called me every day, feeding me assurances that if I just persevered and kept hanging onto him tightly, he would start to come out the other side in a few days or so, by no means cured, but through the worst of the crippling withdrawal symptoms. I think she was checking in more for my benefit than his.

At least once a day, I dragged him outside for fresh air. Sometimes, we walked the small path leading around the edge of the lake. Others, we simply sat on the bank looking out over the expanse of glittering blue water. I’d offered on several occasions to do yoga with him, a thought that made him laugh this weak and brittle laugh, but he dismissed my request each time with a “Maybe later.”

The renovation had mainly fallen to the wayside. I worked a little each day while Anders took one of his many naps, but he didn’t sleep well without me close by, and I'd find him wandering the house, overflowing with restless energy. Laurel texted or called daily, and I alternated between missing her calls or feeding her generic, vague updates about the state of things. I wouldn’t be able to hold her off for long, but hopefully long enough that Anders would be back on his feet and able to channel some of that restlessness into the project.

He hadn’t once asked me for the drugs or alcohol I’d taken from his room. I worried he had found where I stashed it, but I counted the pills every night, and all were accounted for. Each morning, I told myself that day would be the one when I finally conceded and flushed it all down the toilet, and every day, I failed to follow through. I don’t know why I clung to it. The poison needed to be eradicated from this place, but a small, nagging voice in the back of my head told me to keep it. A suffocating fear that if he asked for them and I couldn’t provide what he needed, he might threaten his life again, and that was something I could not risk.

I must have drifted off at some point. The next thing I knew, the bed shifted below me as Anders’ head moved from my lap. “Shit, Beck. I’m sorry.”

I opened a heavy lid and peeked over at him. His face was flushed with a color I hadn’t seen on it in almost two weeks. The bags that usually darkened underneath his eyes seemed to have lifted, and he had this dorky half-grin on his face, both playful and embarrassed.

“Didn’t mean to snuggle you.”

“It’s alright.” I stretched out my limbs. Sleeping sitting up in bed had done nothing good to my already abused shoulder, which ached fiercely. I tried to rub out the worst of the discomfort and finally forced open both my eyes to the bright room. “How are you feeling?”

“Better than you look, that’s for sure.” He laughed, and it was the most magical sound I’d ever heard.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I think so.” He glanced around the room, observing the chaos surrounding the island of the bed. Clothes were strewn across the floor, plates and dishes stacked on almost every surface, and the forgotten air mattress lay half deflated, shoved into a corner. “This place needs a scrub down.”

“So do you.” I wrinkled up my nose in mock offense.

“That bad?”

“I mean, it’s not great. I had debated chucking you in the lake if things got much worse, but I’m not convinced you would come out smelling any better than you went in.”

He blushed, dropping his gaze to his fidgeting hands. Uncertainty lined his face. “Thank you.”

“I just said you stink, and I had plans to drown you. I’m not sure you should be thanking me.” I tried to keep my tone light, desperate to hold on to the good mood Anders had woken up in. But I could see it shifting in his eyes, the weight of emotions starting to darken them again. I was determined not to let it pull him under. “Want to hit up a meeting, then help me with a few things around the house? I have a couple of projects that need two sets of hands, or I’m sure I could find something for you to take a sledgehammer to.”

This brightened him up again. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

“Get showered. I’ll make us breakfast, and then we can head out.”

The sound of the doorbell ringing a little after six pulled me out of deep concentration. The thing hadn’t worked since we arrived, but apparently, my half-hearted tinkering with it a few days ago had been more effective than I initially thought. I waited a moment to see if Anders, who had been working in the music room, would get it, but when a second ring sounded through the house, I rose reluctantly and went downstairs. We hadn’t been expecting anyone, and a slight pang of fear coursed through me that maybe Laurel had come to surprise us with a last-minute visit.

Not that the idea of Laurel visiting was a terrible one. But we had been apart a little over a month now, longer than we'd ever been separated before, and our lack of communication–caused by me covering for Anders–had left a rift between us. My last few conversations with her were brief, and her texts snippy at best. While part of me hoped it was Laurel, I still let out a sigh of deep relief when I opened the door to find Kara, her arms heavy with food.

“Kara, hey. Did I miss a text from you?” I honestly wasn’t even sure how she knew we were staying here. I didn’t remember telling her that information in our brief check-ins.

“No, sorry to just drop by, but I was in the neighborhood…”

“In the neighborhood with takeout?” I cocked an eyebrow relieving her arms of some of the containers.

“You caught me. I just wanted to stop by and see how things were going. Make sure you boys were eating.” She stepped into the entryway, giving me a side hug that I couldn’t easily return now my arms were full. “He seemed better today?”

I ushered her further inside, pressing the door gently closed behind her. “That was kind of you.” Kara was only a few years older than Anders but affectionally referred to herself as the group’s mother hen. The first day I met her, she proclaimed we were under her wing, and if either of us needed anything, all we had to do was ask. I’d yet to take her up on the offer. She was always the one checking in with me, but her kind smile told me she was being genuine. “He seems to be coming out the other side of it now.”

“That’s great, Beckham.” I guided her through the house and out to the back porch, her breath catching as she took in the view of the lake. “This is gorgeous.”

As most of the house was still in varying levels of disrepair, we had set up a table out back where we ate most of our meals. Well, I ate. Anders grazed at best, but at least he was starting to keep food down again. The last week had been especially transformative for him. His face was beginning to fill out, some of the hollowness disappearing from his eyes. I wasn’t foolish enough to think he was cured, but he was slowly coming back to life. Most days, he chatted casually with me as we worked side by side. Others, like today, he drifted off to work separately, however, each time I checked in on him, he seemed content. A mixture of alternative music and punk rock blasting from a Bluetooth speaker, a cigarette hanging from his mouth as he swayed to the beat, lost in whatever project he was working on.

“And how are you doing?”

She set about unpacking the various boxes she'd brought with her, the delicious smells of Chinese drifting over me. My stomach growled, reminding me it had been breakfast since I last ate, and even that had been only a croissant paired with a stale cup of coffee provided by the AA meeting this morning.

“Oh, you know me, I’m fine. Healthy as can be, this lake air has been doing us both wonders.”

“That’s not what I meant.” She fixed me with a look I could not quite place before continuing, “Being the loved one of an addict, especially one in active recovery, can be hard. You’re doing an amazing job of supporting Anders, but you must take time to look after yourself as well.”

The smile she offered me while she patiently waited for me to respond was kind, but my brain was stuck on her choice of words: loved one.

“Oh, we…I don’t…” I started and stopped the sentence several times, fumbling for a way to explain what Anders was to me without sounding like a complete asshole. Sure, our relationship had become incredibly close over the last few weeks, but it was more out of necessity than anything deeper, and it for sure wasn’t anything remotely resembling love. But the truth was, Anders was becoming something to me. “We are just friends.” That didn’t feel right, either.

Kara didn’t bat an eye. “I shouldn’t have assumed.” Another moment passed between us where her gaze seemed to say a thousand things I couldn't translate. “He is fortunate to have a friend like you, but…” She broke herself off, pretending to get distracted by a container of orange chicken.

“But what?”

She stabbed at the meat with her chopsticks a few times before letting out a sigh. “It’s not my place, but just be careful. The way Anders looks at you…Well, I get the vibe that whatever is going on between you isn’t just friendship for him.”

The weight behind her words should have concerned me, but instead, my heart skipped a beat in my chest. Something I would have to examine later, no doubt, but surely she was wrong. I didn’t get the feeling Anders allowed himself to get close to anyone. The concept that he could feel something beyond friendship for me was almost laughable, considering just a few short weeks ago, the guy barely tolerated me. Still, for some bizarre reason, the thought excited me. Perhaps I had become starved for attention in Laurel’s absence, or maybe it was just the feeling of being genuinely needed by someone else for once that was throwing my brain completely out of wack. Whatever it was, Kara was right. I needed to be careful. The slightest mistake, the smallest overstep, could derail all the progress Anders had made over the last few weeks.

I offered her a slight nod before heading back inside to drag Anders out to eat with us, my head buzzing with a million thoughts.