Under The Magnolia Read online

  continue to heal and focus on me.

  ∞∞∞

  Discharge day, and I’m terrified. How do I re-enter the world? I can just

  barely see blurry colors when my eyes are open, maybe I’ll see a shape if its

  four inches from my face. I can see when it’s light, or when it’s dark, or if

  something is red instead of blue. But that’s about it.

  My legs…my legs betrayed me. I can’t walk. What will the world do

  with an 18 year-old girl that can’t walk or see properly? Who will want me?

  How will I do anything? And do I want to?

  A lawyer came to visit me, told me I inherited the insurance money from

  the fire. My father passed away like I thought he might, and it makes me

  smile inside my head. Evil like that shouldn’t get to see the sunshine or

  smell the rain. Or the way magnolia blossoms bloom in spring, scenting the

  air and dancing in the southern humidity.

  I have money, but no house. I own the property where the house burnt

  down, but what am I going to do with that? I can’t use a phone or a

  computer to hire people, to make plans. If my boys were here, they’d know

  what to do. I can’t bring myself to call them, though.

  Sasha thinks I should, that if they loved me the way she thought they did,

  they’d be here to take care of me. But they’re 18 and should be graduating

  soon. The last thing they need is the burden of a handicapped woman.

  They’ll just grow to resent me. I really couldn’t live with myself if I let that

  happen. I needed to keep their memories happy ones, the dreams I once

  dreamt as fantasies.

  They’ll go off to college, meet friends, get married, have families, make a

  life. I would be here, broken and alone, but happier for the fact that they

  didn’t have to reduce themselves to be my caretakers. They wouldn’t be

  able to love me, not really, if they had to help me dress and eat and do all

  the other millions of things I now required help with to live.

  Theo, though. Theo is a friend. He doesn’t love me, so I can accept his

  help. He didn’t know me before, so he doesn’t have anything to compare it

  to. He tells me I’m beautiful, and he sounds so sincere I almost believe him.

  Then again, the rich way his voice rumbles around me would probably get

  me believing anything.

  Constantine, age 19

  I look around the shop, trying to take an inventory of things. My piece of

  shit dad had finally left, and Mom and I were trying to move forward. The

  only thing that asshole ever did for me was teach me to repair almost

  anything, and how to ride a motorcycle. I wish he could have done it

  without beating my mom, but at least I could take care of her now.

  I knew I had someone coming in soon having engine problems, so I get

  to work straightening things up and making sure I know where everything

  is. It’s already warm outside, that sun shining like it thinks it will help

  improve my mood.

  My grief counsellor had been trying to get me to journal my feelings, to

  explore the way I reacted to everything, but how the hell do I talk to a damn

  piece of paper? How do I pull out a book and let go of the one thing I can’t

  bring myself to expel?

  I’m scared that if I start writing about the girl that wrecked me, that I’ll

  lose the memories for good. That the second I put ink to page and write

  about the way her lips tasted after she’d put on her cherry Chapstick and

  how it made me want to possess her entirely, would become less tactile. Or

  how the tentative way her tongue would feel mine was my undoing, and

  that if I admitted that, I wouldn’t own it anymore.

  Stupid, I know, but if I let the grief go, then I have nothing to remember

  the girl that will forever be 16 and laughing in my memories. The way

  she’d roll her eyes at us and the grab our hands, or the way she’d let us

  sneak inside her window so we could hold her while she slept. I’ll never get

  that experience again, and I’m okay with it, because she’s the only girl I can

  imagine touching that way.

  But if I couldn’t let myself talk about what hurt, then maybe it was time

  to just try and make new pain to hold onto. Maybe if I punished myself

  enough, pushed any sort of feelings away hard enough, I’d be able to forget

  how real her love was, and how deep it ran.

  An older sedan pulls up and some brunette climbs out, cut-offs fraying

  and her t-shirt hugging her body. She was pretty, and she’d been trying to

  get me to ask her out for weeks, but if she was showing up at my shop and

  making appointments, then I was either going to have to try harder to tell

  her I wasn’t interested or allow her to try and fix something inside of me.

  Maybe all I needed was a distraction.

  “Hey, Constantine. Thanks for letting me bring her in. The check engine

  light won’t go off and it’s making a weird sound when I start it.”

  I nod at her, trying out my ability to stand near her as I take a look under

  the hood. She’s leaning against the side of the car with one impossibly long

  leg extended and one folded up behind her on the door and I feel almost

  paralyzed by her skin.

  I swallow loudly, afraid of what I want. I had been holding onto my

  virginity for so damn long, thinking that Amelia was it for me. But she’s

  gone, isn’t she? What the hell was I waiting for? I wasn’t going to get

  another chance at having a soulmate, so maybe I should just get it over with

  and touch Blaire. A man could do a whole lot worse.

  “I’ll take a look.”

  My voice comes out too scratchy, too low. She takes a half step forward

  and I make eye contact, her smile a poor substitute for the one I want, but

  it’s here and it’s warm and it’s alive. I’m sure I’ll hate myself later, but I go

  in anyway. Slowly, so she knows what I’m doing.

  She seems to get excited that I’m finally willing to see her as a woman

  after all her incessant come-ons and flirting. She puts a hand to my chest

  and I have to pause for a moment, getting used to the feel of it before I can

  unlock my muscles and reach for her.

  “How’s your morning going?”

  “It’s fine. Maybe better now.” I step a little closer, trying to hold back the

  tremors that come from what my brain and body insists is cheating. A

  couple pretty words and she’s smiling at me way too big. Maybe this will be

  easier than I thought.

  Fortified by my mild success, I reach past her and check out the dash,

  brushing across her as I do so. I can hear her breathing quicken and it’s kind

  of exciting. I check the mileage and spin around to write it down, grabbing

  a clipboard so I can start my evaluation.

  She hangs around the shop as I look through everything, and it doesn’t

  take me long to see that the belt just needs to be replaced. Fine, that’s pretty

  easy and fast. She doesn’t need to know that, though. I drag it out a little,

  working up the confidence to get closer.

  “You’re pretty good with your hands, aren’t you?”

  I look around the hood to see her lounging on a stool, conjuring up a fake

  smile to tell her I think she’s cute.

  “I suppos
e. Come here.”

  She immediately walks over, leaning over the engine with me, shoulders

  brushing.

  “You see that here?”

  I grab her hand and point to where the belt is.

  “Yeah.”

  “You can help me. We need to just remove it and put a new one in.”

  It’s completely stupid, but she’s eating it up. We work in near silence, me

  guiding her hands and showing her everything I do, touching her more than

  necessary, and as soon as the job is done she leans in and kisses me.

  It’s all wrong, but it feels like I need to get past this, so I kiss her back. I

  make myself kiss her back. My hands go to her hips, feeling the skin under

  the hem of her t-shirt, then she steps inside the frame of my legs as I lean

  against the side of her car, and we’re full on making out.

  I can’t help that my dick is getting all worked up, especially when her

  pelvis starts pressing into me and giving me something to push against.

  “I’ve liked you for a really long time.”

  “Yeah?”

  She nods, then kisses me again. I almost half hope we get interrupted so

  this will stop, but we don’t, so it continues on until she’s got her shirt off,

  my shirt off, and then she’s reaching for my jeans. We fall into the backseat

  of her car, door open, and everything becomes a bit of a blur.

  Everything comes back into sharp focus when she reaches for a condom

  in her glove box, her hand on my dick feeling incredible but also really

  wrong. I don’t stop her. She spreads her legs and I wish I could appreciate

  this moment for what it is, but I know that isn’t possible. She’s eager and

  sweet, but it’s still all wrong.

  I fuck her anyway.

  Every thrust against her has me fighting tears, her moans hurting my

  head. I try and help her get there by playing with her clit, and I’m not sure if

  she’s faking it, or actually enjoying herself, but it sounds like something

  happens. As soon as that something happens, I put all my focus onto getting

  myself off, pretending that the girl underneath me looks like someone else.

  Someone I’ll never get to touch this way.

  I know I’m punishing myself, but isn’t that the whole point of this

  situation?

  As soon as I come, I’m backing away and catching my breath, looking at

  her satisfied smile as she lays in her backseat. And I immediately have to

  spin around and vomit, luckily making it to the trash can. I hear another set

  of wheels travelling over the gravel drive, hoping like hell it’s one of the

  guys.

  “Wow…that bad, huh?”

  Great, now she’s pissed. I hear her pull her clothes back on as I continue

  to dry heave, insulting the hell out of the girl that just offered herself up to

  me. It’s betrayal, this feeling that’s making me so ill. I hear Cam start

  talking to her, telling her to just go and that she doesn’t owe anything for

  the car repair. Whatever, I guess it’s the least I can do for her.

  When the car is gone and I don’t have to look at the crime scene anymore

  I finally peel the condom off, which makes my body start heaving again,

  zipping up my pants as Cam hands me the shirt I had discarded.

  He doesn’t say anything, just lets me be miserable, which I’m thankful

  for. There. I wasn’t a virgin anymore, so I guess my plan succeeded.

  When I can finally stand without feeling dizzy he closes the shop for me,

  following me inside so I can brush my teeth. It’s moments like this that I

  know that we could have loved the same girl together forever, as cheesy as

  that sounds. I pull out the sketch I kept drawing, folded up and shoved

  inside my desk drawer.

  “You want to go get a tattoo?”

  Maybe if I get this magnolia flower somewhere I can carry with me

  always, I can start being more human again.

  “We better get Alex in on this.”

  Later that night, we’ve all got some version of the flower on our bodies.

  It feels right, an altar we can pray to to make sure the woman we all loved

  will never fade from our memories.

  Or maybe we’re all just drunk again and everything seems so serious.

  “Dude. We should live together.”

  I turn my head to look at Cam where he’s lying next to me, the three of

  us sprawled across the scuffed hardwood floors in my childhood bedroom.

  “I can’t believe I had sex today.”

  That makes all of us laugh, because it’s easier than crying right now.

  “Cam’s right. We should buy a house. Something She would have loved.”

  I take another sip of beer, trying to imagine what that would look like.

  “It needs to have a porch. She would have wanted a porch.”

  “And white shutters. She always talked about how the little things on

  houses made them come to life.”

  We keep listing all the shit we think we need, and even in our drunk state

  we manage to figure out that between the three of us we probably could buy

  a house. Alex just got his huge inheritance from his family since they’re

  like rich, and I’ve got money coming in from the shop, and Cam has all the

  skills from working on the farm to tackle any sort of reno project.

  Alex doesn’t care if he fronts most of the money, we don’t care that this

  is probably going to end up being a terrible idea. It’s happening.

  Theo

  I’m showing the new guy around the station, feeling something inside

  him resonate with me. He seems a bit haunted for a nineteen-year-old,

  though it’s probably a little early to be talking about feelings. I’m not sure

  what made him work so hard to be accepted, but I have a feeling he’s going

  to be a good asset to the team.

  I brush off offers from some of the other guys to go out for drinks, the

  thought wholly unappealing when I’ve got a cute roommate waiting for me

  to come home and hang out. I don’t talk about her much, but they all seem

  to know anyway that I’d move her past the friend zone if she’d let me.

  My co-workers all think it’s funny I’m so hung up on someone that I’m

  not sleeping with, and I’ve kept the details of how we met to myself. I’m

  not sure they wouldn’t be uncomfortable thinking I crossed some sort of

  invisible line that says to not date people you save. Not that they’d

  begrudge me my twisted sort of happiness if they knew everything about

  her and why she had needed someone in her corner so badly, but I wasn’t

  ready to advertise what we were to each other, even after almost a year of

  living together.

  I had been slowly making the house more comfortable for her, starting

  with a wild sort of jungle out on the small backyard area, giving her a bit of

  nature she can wheel herself out into and relax. I found her out there most

  days when I got home, listening to audio books or just staring off like she

  was re-living a part of her past life. The one she won’t talk about outside of

  her therapy sessions.

  I could feel the heartbreak bleed through her when her exes got brought

  up or something reminded her of them, which seemed to be a whole lot, but

  the best thing to do that I’ve found is just to change the subject, and find

  something hap
py or good to tell her, or to have her tell me. I liked to keep

  her in the present, because it’s where I was happiest, where I was building

  new memories with her.

  One of the things she loved to do was watch movies together, and I loved

  it as well because she let me sit really close to her and tell her what all the

  characters were doing on screen, had me describe what everyone looked

  like and any other relevant detail she thought of to ask about. I could almost

  pretend that when I whispered something in her ear, that I was whispering

  something more significant.

  I close my locker, letting the silence of my co-workers allow me to wave

  and leave quietly. They know when I get all quiet and introspective I’m

  thinking ahead to what waits at home for me, and though they don’t know

  all the details they know that she’s got some extra challenges that we have

  to work with.

  I see my trainee, Alex, joking with some of the other guys and helping to

  mop the floor, and I just know he’ll fit in fine. I offer him his own wave as I

  head to my car, mind on what to pick up for dinner for me and Amelia.

  Amelia, age 20

  “Honey, I’m home!”

  I giggle at Theo’s usual greeting, not even surprised anymore with how

  easy it is for me to make such sounds. Theo is…magical.

  “There’s my girl.”

  I’m an awful mess, likely covered in paint, but Theo doesn’t care. Theo

  has never given up on me, no matter how hard I try to push him into it. He

  says I’m stuck with him.

  “How was work?”

  “Not as colorful as yours, I see. I uh, sold another one of your paintings.”

  “What?”

  Paint has become my narrative of the world as I see it. Sounds kind of

  impossible, a blind painter. But what not a lot of people realize is that being

  blind doesn’t mean infinite darkness. It’s different for every person of

  course, but I see some things.

  Enough to slap paint on giant canvases and show how I see the world.

  Apparently, some people like the way they come out, because I’ve been

  having a hard time keeping anything around me. My studio is getting kind

  of empty, actually.

  I don’t even remember how it started. In those early days when all I knew