Blindness

Cody steps from the truck and starts to walk in our direction, the look on his face full of concern. Jessie doesn’t let him get closer than a few steps, though, as she strides at him with fierce determination. I even think I see a small amount of fear in his eyes.

I can’t hear them—and I’m torn between wanting to and wishing I could melt into the ground beneath me. Jessie’s hands are waving around her, and more than once she grabs Cody’s arm and stops him from passing her, from heading toward me. He’s rubbing the back of his neck, and he keeps pushing his hand through his hair.

My feet are planted firmly where she left me; I do as she said, despite the overwhelming urge to let my emotions run my body. I fight against the desire to run to him, not knowing if I would pound on his chest, or throw myself around him and kiss his mouth until I felt the scratch of his chin hard against my skin.

He’s pacing now, walking away from her, but coming back to her and pointing. I hear bits and pieces. He keeps saying, “You don’t understand.” But I don’t know what Jessie’s saying in return.

And then suddenly everything stops. Cody’s posture wanes, his shoulders slump, and his chin falls to his chest. Jessie turns to look at me. Slowly Cody’s face rises until he’s staring right at me; his eyes say just how sorry he is, and his half-smile is nothing happy at all. And I can’t help the flow of tears that come from looking at him. I gasp a little and bring my fist up to my mouth, biting on it in an attempt to stop myself from letting go of too much.

I see Cody lunge toward me, and I flinch when Jessie grabs him. He’s yelling at her, and then he says something that makes her slap him in the face—hard. She doesn’t give him anything more after that, and she’s marching back to me, reaching for my hand, while he stands in the distance behind her, his hand flat against the place where she struck him. When she gets to me, she whisks me around and finds the key to the front door.

“I know it’s hard, but don’t look at him. He doesn’t deserve you right now, and he needs to know what that feels like,” she says.

“What do you mean?” I say, part of me worried that something’s wrong—that Cody’s fallen into drugs, like Gabe once did.

“Charlie, please trust me on this, and just don’t…” she says, as she pushes the door open. I grab her arm, desperate to understand.

“He slept with Kyla tonight. They’ve been hanging out…since he saw her at the concert. And tonight they hooked up. And he’s bringing her to Thanksgiving,” she says, the sharp pain through my heart so foreign, so awful, but also answering the one question I’ve been struggling with since I moved into the Appleton house.

I’ve never really been in love before, and now that I am, I hope I never am again.

Chapter 14: Reasons to Be Thankful

I’m awake hours before Jessie. I sneak downstairs to brew myself a pot of coffee. It’s been days since I’ve slept an honest full night through, and if I’m going to drive to the airport today, I’m going to need to spike my energy.

The sun is long from rising, and the house is the same unnerving quiet that it always is. It’s like I live with ghosts—these fake people that pass through on special occasions. Jim is flying in Thanksgiving night, late, so I doubt Shelly will come out of her room at all today. Trevor says that she always hires a catering company to bring in Thanksgiving, and he told her how many people he was bringing with him, so she already knows how many plates to set.

I load the grounds into the machine and push the button, leaning forward to wait for the water to drip into the pot. It’s funny, I can’t sleep a wink with my head on my pillow, but with my chin propped atop my hands while I stand at the counter, I’m suddenly sleepy.

“You can’t sleep either?” Cody says, his voice caught between normal and a whisper.

I’m not surprised to hear him. I think somewhere inside me I thought—maybe hoped—that if I came down here, he’d find his way to me.

“No,” I say, keeping it short. I’m not really sure what I want to say to him, and I’m not sure I’m ready to be nice.

“Trevor coming in today?” he asks, accentuating Trevor’s name. I get it. He’s reminding me that I have no rights to him—that I’m the one that’s taken. And he’s right. But it doesn’t mean what he did with Kyla didn’t destroy me.

“Yes,” I say, still not turning to face him. I decide to keep the one-word answers up as long as I can; they seem to be keeping me out of trouble.