I shrug.
She shakes her head and takes the shirt from me that I just stripped off. I unhook my bra and throw it in the sink. She stares wide-eyed at the huge purple bruise that seems to have morphed from my side to the front and back of my torso.
“I’m okay, Aerie—really I am. I’m not going to fall off the deep end.”
I slip my arms into her USC sweatshirt and pull it over my head. She grabs the hem and pulls it down for me and I let her. Then she pulls my hair out of the hood.
“I think we need to get those tangles out, I’m going to grab a brush out of my purse. I left it in the car. I’ll be right back. Will you be okay?”
“Yeah, of course.” And then as she leaves the room I call after her, “Hey, you don’t have any toilet paper in your car, do you?”
She laughs a little and says, “No, but I have Starbucks napkins. I’ll bring you some.” And with that she leaves me in the bathroom to change out of my now partially dried and stiffened jeans. Her sweatpants are way too short on me and soon I’m just staring at myself in the mirror. Memories of the girl who lost her fiancé are reflected back to me. I clutch the counter and close my eyes—I am not that same girl. I am much stronger. I will not fall back into a depressed state. What happened this morning cannot happen again—this I know. Jumping into the ocean to escape all the madness was simply a momentary lapse in judgment. Right?
Opening my eyes I take a deep breath and exit the bathroom. I glance over at the bed in the room I never wanted to be in after Ben died and try not to think of the pain and suffering his death caused me—and for what?
Back in the entryway, I grab the drinks, and go sit in one of the chairs, blocking out all thoughts of Ben. Aerie comes in a few minutes later.
“Thank you so much for this.” I raise my large paper cup in the air.
“Yeah, well I thought you might need some and I grabbed myself a tea while I was at it.”
When she says the word tea, I think about River and the first morning we spent together . . . when I wasn’t sure if he was a coffee or tea drinker. How relieved I was that he drank coffee.
She comes over to me and the memory dissipates as she tries to brush the knots out of my hair but can’t, so just ends up twirling it into a messy bun and securing it with the elastic she removed from her wrist.
“Always prepared.”
“I try to be,” she says, grabbing her cup and sitting in the chair next to me. She looks me up and down. “You know, we can go to my place and you can take a shower.”
“No, I really just want to stay here.”
She nods her head and we both sit quietly, sipping our drinks until I break the silence. “What else did Grace tell you about Ben, other than he’s alive? . . .” I start to speak the truth but the words sound strange, not real, and I can’t even complete the sentence.
“All she told me was that Ben was involved in something dangerous and had to leave for his safety and . . . ,” she pauses before adding, “. . . and for yours, Dahlia. But she didn’t feel comfortable discussing anything else and I didn’t push her.”
Frowning, I say, “I can see why. It’s a crazy story and honestly really hard to believe.”
“Why? Do you think he’s lying to you?”
“No. I don’t. It was just a lot to process and then he said something that set me off and I kind of exploded.”
“What did he say?”
“He told me he made the choice to leave.”
“What do you mean he had a choice?”
“He got himself into a bad situation and instead of talking about it, and us facing it together, he left.”
“Dahlia, did you stay to let him finish?”
“I tried, Aerie, I did. But I couldn’t listen to him anymore. You know what I went through when he died and to hear he made a choice . . .”
“Can you at least try to forgive him, so you can move past this and get some closure?”
“No! No! I’m not going to forgive him for what he did. I can’t!”
I’m unable to distinguish whether what I just said annoys her or saddens her, but from the slight downward curl of her lip, I’d have to go with saddens. We stare at each other for a long while and I know she’s being cautious with her words.
“Do you think you should sit down and listen to everything? I don’t know what he did, but I know he loved you and I’m sure the choice wasn’t easy.”
Not able to hide my irritation I tell her, “Don’t you get it, Aerie?—that’s just it, talking to him again won’t change anything.”
We share silence for a few more moments.
She raises an eyebrow. “I know it won’t, but I think it will help you better understand why he did what he did.”
Wow. She understands more than I thought she did.
I pause for a minute trying to understand why she’s pleading Ben’s case. When I think I’ve figured it out my face flames with skepticism and disbelief. “You don’t think I’m going to just jump out of my relationship with River and back into Ben’s arms? Do you, Aerie? Because it doesn’t work that way.”
Her eyes flash to mine. She sets her tea down and walks over and kneels in front of me, grabbing my hands. In a low voice she says, “Of course not. I know it doesn’t work that way and no one expects that at all.” Then she squeezes my hands tightly. “I know you love River. I even set you up to meet him to begin with because I knew how you felt about him. We’ve talked about that. This isn’t about choosing one guy over the other. It’s about listening to and maybe even forgiving a man you’ve known your whole life. Not ruling it out. That’s all. I’m not saying this for him, but for you, for your own peace of mind. I know you, Dahlia—this will drive you crazy.”
That wasn’t at all what I’d expected to hear. And although I understand her intentions, I know forgiveness isn’t in me right now.
She sighs and then shrugs. “Maybe try looking at the situation from his point of view, that’s all. Just think about it.”
I nod. “I’ll try but that doesn’t mean I’m going to forgive him.” With that, she stands up and goes to sit back in her chair.
Looking down at the coffee cup still in my hand, I swirl it around. “River and I got into a fight after I saw Ben this morning.”
She says nothing. Fuck me, she knows that, too. I can tell immediately because she stands back up and paces the room, avoiding my intent stare at all costs.
“Aerie. What do you know?”
She doesn’t answer and I stand up and walk over to her. “Aerie. Tell me now.”
“Dahlia, I think I should let River explain.”
“Well River isn’t here right now and he isn’t talking to me anyway. So how about you explain.”
“Fuck!” she says and she never says f**k so I know it’s bad.
She walks to the window and pulls her phone out of her pocket then dials a number. “Serena, are you almost here?” she says and after a few moments she hangs up.
I gape at her. “What’s going on here? You called Serena already. Why?”
“Dahlia, please calm down. We didn’t want to tell you right away about the attack because . . .”
I cut her off. “Did you always know Ben was alive? Did you know this whole time?”
“Jesus, Dahlia. No! No! I knew nothing about that, I swear. God, I would never have let you go through that if I had known, none of us would have. What I meant was we knew who attacked you, but that’s all.”
I study her face, trying to understand. “We? You mean all of you knew? Not just River?”
“Dahlia, please let River explain this.”
“No Aerie, I want you to explain the ‘we’ to me now.”
She sighs as if resigning herself to a fate worse than death as she slumps back in the chair and picks up her cup. She takes a few drawn-out sips before talking. “The night before you were attacked, Grace was notified that Ben’s shooter was released. Caleb found him and chased him out of your house. He was worried that guy would come after you. Grace tried to call you, Serena tried to call you, and Caleb tried to call you. They all left you messages but you never called them back. Serena tried again in the morning and River answered. They told him everything that had been going on, but it was too late by then,” she stops for a few seconds as I continue to glare at her in total and complete shock.
“Go on. So why not tell me? I don’t understand.”
“Dahlia, we remember how you were when Ben died, and none of us wanted to bring that pain back on you. Grace wanted to tell you in person so she asked River to wait before saying anything. Then you two decided to go get married and not tell anyone. I questioned River’s decision to not tell you first, but in the end I decided I’d rather see you happy than risk what might happen if we dredged up those sad memories.” She stands back up and walks over to me.
I try to absorb all this information. Is there anyone I can trust? Wanting to put the pieces together, I run out the door to my car and grab my phone from the console. Back in the house I glance at the screen and see three missed calls. I immediately scroll through my voice messages. There are none from five days ago. River must have deleted them. I shake my head and throw my phone across the room. I can hear the sound of destruction as the screen shatters, but I don’t care. I don’t need it. He hasn’t even called me, but Unknown Caller has called another three times.
I sink to the ground and pull my knees to my chest. “I can’t believe he hasn’t even called me since our argument this morning.”
Aerie comes to sit next to me and looks at me questioningly. “Who? Ben?”
“No! Not Ben. I told you I don’t want to f**king talk to him. River. River hasn’t called me.”
As I’m speaking, I hear the door open and look over to the foyer. Serena stands there with a bag of Chinese takeout in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other.
“Maybe you should call him? You’re the one who slapped him and left him at Mom’s,” she says when she walks into the room and sets down the bag on the coffee table.
“How do you know that?” I know I’m staring at her, but I can’t help it.
“Dahlia, Mom saw the whole thing. She saw you and River at your car and saw you drive away. She called you to come back home, but you wouldn’t answer.”
“Serena, so much has happened in the last day, I’m doing the best I can. I’m just not ready to talk about it yet.”
“I get it, Dahlia, but what you don’t understand is that by avoiding the issues you’re just causing a bigger rift between everybody. You need to stop running away and face what’s right in front of you. You might actually be surprised by the outcome.”
I drop my head into my hands. I don’t even know how to respond because there are so many issues. It’s not that I’m running; it’s that my faith in Ben is shattered and talking to River seemed pointless at the time, we were both just too mad. Serena takes my hand and pulls me over to the sofa to sit next to her. We’re facing each other as she says, “Dahlia, I know you don’t want to talk about this, but you need to know what happened this morning.”
“I have enough to think about, I don’t need to hear more.”
I start to stand up and Serena reaches for me. “Wait, you need to hear this. After you left this morning, Ben and River were yelling at each other in the driveway. River lunged at Ben and they started fighting. It took Mom screaming at them for them to stop.”
“Oh my God, I never thought, I just never even thought about them seeing each other, let alone what would happen if they did.”
Serena gives me a look and scolds me. “You would have known if you’d have answered your goddamn phone.”
