Deanna Roy - Forever Innocent

I raced along the counter and burst through the door to the back room. God, god, god. What was wrong with me? Would I be ruined forever? I leaned against a wall, one hand to my chest. My coworker Jason was supposed to be here, to help. Where was he? I wasn’t up for being out there. I should be doing my setup work in the back.

My chest had gone all tight. I knew what I should do, breathe slowly and relax, but instead I did the same thing as always and held my breath, making it worse, watching the spots flash in front of my eyes. Everything started going dark and my knees buckled. Without anything blocking my airflow, I knew I’d just sink to the floor, conk my head, and then come back around. I’d done it a thousand times in the last few years. It helped. For a few minutes, I always felt like I knew what it had been like for baby Finn, after the ventilator went off, and his little chest stopped moving up and down —

My head hit the floor.

The cold of the concrete against my cheek started bringing me back. The room returned in degrees, first dark, then lighter, then slowly gaining color and sound. I sat on the floor, my back against a wire rack of mugs. Stupid. I shouldn’t have done this here. I could have brought down a whole pile of dishes and lost an entire paycheck.

Or someone could have found me and seen just how crazy I could be.

I heaved myself up and headed to the sink. The water splashing on my face and neck helped me relax and regain control. I didn’t know any other way to cope.

I didn’t have to accept or reject that boy out there. I was going to be fine.

When I walked back out, another customer, a girl, was in line behind the boy. I couldn’t believe he was still standing there.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Did you need something?”

He looked confused and anxious. “I just — you seemed —” He stopped talking and stepped to the side so the girl could come up.

“I need another mocha latte,” she said, casting a quick glance at the boy.

“No problem,” I said and whirled away. The moment was gone. The boy would move on. I would never look at another one again, not until I knew I could handle it, whenever that might be.

When I turned around, the girl was pulling out one of those digital cigarettes. “We don’t allow those inside,” I said and pushed her latte across the counter.

“It’s not a real cigarette.”

“I know, but still, we ask you to take those things on the patio.”

The girl frowned. “I know my rights. There is no ban on these right now.”

This was making my day even better. I took in a deep breath, still feeling the constriction in my chest from my episode. “I don’t make the rules. I just get fired if I don’t enforce them.”

She dropped a five on the counter and picked up her latte. “So kick me out.” Her heavy footfalls on the hardwood floor echoed through the room as she stomped back to her table to make a big show of lifting the e-cig to her lips.

I couldn’t bear to look at the boy, who was still standing by the counter. This was humiliating, plus a problem. Martin wouldn’t really fire me, but he’d be upset. We kept asking him to put up a sign about the e-cigs, but so far he hadn’t done it.

“Hey.” The boy’s expression was full of sympathy. “If you could use a break from all this later, this is me.” He pushed a napkin toward me. “It’ll go straight to my phone.”

The napkin stuck to my damp hand. Austin Thompson. OneQuirkyDude44 was his e-mail handle, which struck me as funny.

“Made you smile.” He tapped the counter twice and turned back to his table.

Jason burst through the back door, his dreadlocks flying behind him. “So freaking sorry. Traffic was a bugger.”

I folded up the napkin and stuck it in my apron pocket. “It’s fine. Only two people here.”

He caught me tucking the note away, but had the sense not to say anything about it. Instead, he pushed an errant hunk of hair out of his face. “Old Man Martin is going to sock it to me if I’m late anymore.”

“He won’t hear it from me,” I said.

“You cool with me saying I was here on time?” He reached around me for an apron below the counter, but I saw him glance at my pocket, as if he was dying to ask about the folded napkin.

I stepped out of his way. “Sure. No point getting fired.”

“That’s why everyone likes you.” His fingers flew as he tied the strings. “Even if you are a Frozen Latte.”

I winced at the nickname and glanced over at Austin, hoping he hadn’t heard.

But Jason caught me looking. “Awwww! Is the ice queen thawing out?” He looked at the pocket yet again.

I backed away toward the door to the storage room. “I have to do the setups.”

“We’ll be calling you Hot Pumpkin Spice before it’s over!” he called after me.

Austin was bound to have heard that. I bolted to my sanctuary and set to grinding the beans that would get us through the evening rush, wishing I could remain invisible forever. 

A pair of giggling girls moved aside as I took the steps several at a time from the top floor of the building to the roof exit. My boots on the concrete made a sharp echo, like striking metal.

A rock propped the door open a few inches. I yanked it wide and the gravelly tarred rooftop seemed to absorb all light. I waited a moment to adjust, my eyes automatically moving to the edges where the city twinkled beyond a gleaming white ledge, and the blackness of the ocean was like the end of everything, like night itself.

Amy, the girl TA I talked to that morning when I switched labs, was lit like a statue by a heavy-duty floor light identical to the ones we used in the shop. “Gavin, right?” she asked. Her face blushed a little as she handed me a popsicle stick. “This will be your cross-staff for the lab.”

I held the little piece of wood between my thumb and finger, flipping it over. Not what I expected. “Rudimentary, my dear Amy.”

She laughed and her face burned even more red. Wisps of blond hair stuck to her cheeks as she reached down into her bag and pulled out a sheet of paper. Her skin was ghostly in the searing light, her legs blown out. She was cute, in a nerdy sort of way, the complete opposite of my type.

“Here are the instructions. You’ll have to calibrate your stick and map out the Big Dipper using it as a measuring device.” She passed me the page. “The calibration chart is around the corner past the door. The degrees on your stick will depend on the length of your arm, so you won’t have the same length as other students.”

“Thanks.” I started to walk away.

“Hey, Gavin?”

I turned back around.

“If you need something, I’m glad to help.” She stared at the paper in my hands. Shy girls. I couldn’t work with them. They seemed so easy to break. I felt heavy with the weight of their expectations, and I knew one misstep could crush their hopes. That was something I was damn good at.

She looked up, cheeks on fire, and I realized why she was so willing to switch me even though it meant more work for her. Good old-fashioned boy crush. “I appreciate you letting me in your group,” I said.

Amy nodded. “Sure.”

A few other lamps had been set up along the roof, the cords snaking every direction. I angled my page toward a light. Draw lines on the stick, yada yada. Calibrate with the wall chart. I glanced at the poster tacked on the wall, where several freshman-looking types were aiming their sticks. Got it.

I dug around in my bag for a marker to divide up the stick. Making a straight line while free-holding something that small would be impossible, so I walked over to the lip of the roof to sit and hold it steady.

The building was one of the dorms on the extreme west side of campus. The city spread out in a twinkle of lights, the roadways like ribbons threading through. All of it was bordered by the black of the Pacific, as though it were a monster bumping up against the edge of civilization.

My stick was barely visible, so I dug a tiny key-chain flashlight from my bag. I held it between my teeth as I drew a line lengthwise on the stick. Passable, but I felt I could do better with a straightedge, so I flipped the stick over to use the cardboard cover of a notebook to try it a second time.

That’s when I heard her voice.

Corabelle stood in the cone of light that shot up next to Amy. She looked like an angel, lit up from below, and her dark hair was bright to the tips.

Holy hell. Why was she here tonight? I had switched to avoid her, to help her out.

Then I realized with a sickening sensation — so had she.

I knew she couldn’t see too far past all that light. I could watch her a moment, so sad looking, so serious. Even doing something as ordinary as accepting a piece of paper, she looked tragic, like a fragile, beautiful doll.

Despite all my work to drive that need of her out of me, it roared back with an ache so powerful that for a second, I really thought it might be easier to swing my legs over the ledge and jump. I couldn’t have Corabelle, not anymore, and if I thought for a minute I ought to try, I had to remember all the things she’d eventually find out. I was simply setting myself up to lose her again.

She stepped out of the light and I was torn between focusing on my task or letting her see that I was watching.

But then it was too late, and she looked straight at me. Her mouth fell open in an astonished “o.”

I left my stuff on the ledge and hurried over to her. “I switched groups.”

She couldn’t seem to tear her gaze away from me, so I kept talking. “When I saw you were still in the class, I thought it would help.”

She closed her mouth finally and gripped her assignment so hard that it crumpled. I took it from her and straightened it against the leg of my jeans.

When I handed it back, she said, “I did the same thing.”

“I’ll talk to Amy,” I said. “I’ll switch back.”

Corabelle’s jaw clenched, and I had to resist the urge to run my finger under her chin, like I always had when she was upset.

“It’s going to be fine. I’ll be fine.” She spun away from me and headed toward the calibration chart.

Bloody hell. Life seemed to be throwing us at each other. Hadn’t it done enough already? 

My hands were shaking so hard that there was no way I could draw a line on a stupid popsicle stick.

Gavin was somewhere behind me. I didn’t believe anymore that I’d be able to shake him. Whatever whim of fate or karma that blasted us apart four years ago apparently felt we should not be separated now. I didn’t know how to fight it.

The feeling I might hyperventilate came over me again, but instead of feeding it, I fought it. Not here, not now. I had to stay in control.

But just looking at Gavin took me back to the days before we were so damaged, when we had no clue that anything could go wrong. We were a family in progress, and our future spread out before us like the stars. I thought we’d be that happy and innocent forever, and that nothing would ever come between us.

I passed the calibration chart and sank down on the roof next to one of the lights, where a couple other girls were reading over the lab instructions.

If I sat just so, Gavin was visible from the corner of my eye. He looked so lean, so strong, and his thighs filled out those jeans like they never had before. I wondered about the rest of him, how he might have changed, and the image of his face over mine, his body propped on his arms, made all the chilly parts of me grow hot. Everything I held tightly inside, my desire to be held close, to lose myself, began to unfurl.

For just a moment, I let myself remember how happy I’d once been. I hadn’t basked in those memories for a long time, not since New Mexico and the disaster there, when I discovered a shocking side of myself, how in a split second despair could turn to violence.

I set my backpack down on the roof and pretended to read the assignment, although Gavin was still in my field of vision. I didn’t want to think of the bad things, just the good ones.

When Finn was just born, literally the first few minutes, I felt completely and utterly blessed. Labor hadn’t been anything like the horror stories everyone had been teasing me with. Sure, the baby was pretty early at 32 weeks, and small. But he was plenty old enough. Babies that age survived all the time.