Page 5 of Moving Forward

“A second? You’re fifteen minutes late,” she scolds.

I roll out of bed, trying to get my bearings. Once a year we make the two-hour drive to buy peaches for Grams’s famous . . . well, everything. There isn’t an item on her diner’s menu that isn’t someone’s favorite, but the majority of people flock toward the peaches. Some even make a big deal out of ordering pies and cobbler and tea early. “This day is as important as any holiday, to the town and to me,” Grams reminds me every year when I start to complain.

To me is what always breaks through my armor. Disappointing myself and this tiny, shitty town has never bothered me. Disappointing Grams . . . that haunts me. I’ve caused her enough trouble and heartache over the years. The least I can do is take one day out of the year to make her happy. Try to be normal. Try being the operative word.

I rummage through my drawers, looking for a pair of khaki shorts and leaving all my clothes rumpled and out of sorts. That will drive me crazy later, but right now I don’t have a choice but to leave my boat a mess unless I want to piss off the one person I actually give a shit about.

I hesitate as I’m about to head outside. Fuck, I can’t do this.

Just like I have every day for the last few years, I head back to my bathroom and pluck my razor out of its hidden place in the drawer under my sink. My heartbeat steadies the second I touch the thin, narrow blade, knowing what it will give me. Feeling. I’ll feel something, even it’s pain. At least then I can pretend for Grams.

Grams knocks on the door again, asking me to hurry up, but my mind is too focused on the cold blade as it slides across my forearm. All I can see is the blood rising to the surface of my skin and flowing between my scars like a river.

“Cain?” Grams asks, closer. Shit, she found the spare key. I have half a mind to shut the door and lock it.

No one should have to live like this. But I stopped living a long time ago. I stopped mattering. And I need this—the blood, the blade, the pain—to remind myself I’m not dead. There’s still one person on earth I’ve got to live for.

Grams bangs on the bathroom door. “Are you okay? Cain, you’re worrying me.”

“Sorry Grams,” I call out, lifelessness weighing heavily in my voice. “Just brushing my teeth.”

Silence answers me. We both know I’m lying. Grams has been fighting me over it, begging me to stop before I really hurt myself. But I think in the back of her mind she realizes I won’t let it get that far. I would never do that to her.

I find the gauze wrap in the medicine cabinet and rotate it around my arm, so practiced that in less than a minute, I’ve got it secured. I pull my shirt sleeve down to hide it from her.

Once a year you have to act alive.

When I open the door, she’s leaning back against the opposite wall, looking paler than usual. Her gaze flickers down to my arm, then quickly back up. “You knew I was coming over,” she tells me. “You knew.”

“Yeah,” I admit. “Snuck up on me, I guess.”

She shakes her and looks on the verge of saying something—something I’ve probably heard a million times by now—but instead steps forward and wraps her arms around me more tightly than you’d expect from such a small woman.

She pulls away, her crystal blue eyes unusually glassy. She’s always been such a put-together woman, running both her family and the diner like a well-oiled machine. I imagine that even in her sleep she’s inventorying, running numbers, and talking to customers. The town loves and adores her just as much as I do. They just don’t feel the same way about me, and vice versa.

“Well, good morning to you. It’s peach day!”

“So I heard,” I answer, leading her away from my bathroom and off the boat. If she spends too much time here she’ll start going on about how I need to find something more permanent that won’t sink or get washed away. When I tell her I’m fine, she’ll take the chance to start in on it needing a woman’s touch—as if any girl within a fifty-mile radius would look me in the eye.

But I know I’ll still have to deal with her lecture at some point today. When she gets on a topic, she sticks to it like super glue. And she is always stuck on my nonexistent social life.

My houseboat is docked on the lake with several other boats. Mine’s the only full-time resident. The others are for leisure. A lot of people gravitate to Orchard Valley because it’s so beautiful, with sandy shores and trees that sway lazily in the wind. It’s easy to get lost in your own world here. It’s a serene escape.

The place is overrun with tourists in the summer months and December, but it’s just your average small town the rest of the year, where everyone is in everyone else’s business. I happen to be the person whose business people really like to get into.

Across from the dock is Grams’s diner, Ruth’s. It’s named after her. The place had originally belonged to my great-great-grandfather, and it had been a post office. When Grandpa took over, he renovated the place and changed the name. He kept the little Willard’s Postal Service decal in the window and put a sign up above the door with “Ruth’s” on it. To keep with the theme he hung up some letters my great-grandparents exchanged during World War II. Some townsfolk also donated their own letters. The place has a homey feeling. When paired with Grams’s fantastic cooking, it keeps tourists and townsfolk coming in religiously.

I know Grams wants to pass it down to me, her only grandchild, to keep it in the family. I don’t have the heart to tell her it would fail in my hands. Ruth’s thrives because of her and would perish because of me.

“We’re not taking your clunker,” Grams tells me as we walk toward my 1987 Chevy.

“I’m not driving your boat of a car, Grams,” I tell her as I unlock the doors.

She lets out a huff. As the only mother figure I’ve ever known, I’ve learned when to obey her and when to match her stubbornness with my own.

She narrows her eyes. “It isn’t a boat. It’s a car, just a big one. The things you children call cars these days are nothing but scraps of metal. Just a little tap from another car is sure to send you straight to the hospital with a broken back.”

I don’t point out that my truck is older than her car. Instead, I mimic her huff and throw myself into the driver’s seat.

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