Page 3 of Born to Run Back
I don’t think I’d ever done anything so outrageous in my life; hugging a stranger like my insides were spilling out and only he could stop it. He smelled like spearmint gum and spicy aftershave, his chest solid yet yielding, letting me mold myself to him as I cried my stupid heart out like I was five years old again, fallen over on the playground with a skinned knee.
“S’okay,” he murmured, his hand in my hair, fingers flexing on my scalp. Had anyone ever done something so intimate? Sure, I’d slept with guys, and on occasion, women too, but that kind of nakedness didn’t compare to this kind of nakedness. It was like I was splayed open, my skin pinned to either side of me, my skull screwed open, exposing my brain and my guts to this stranger whosenameI didn’t even know.
And it didn’t even terrify me. What terrified me was stopping, ending. Of losing him and returning to my solitary observance of loneliness.
That had never happened to me before. I’d never wanted to be anything but lonely. Lonely was secure. Lonely wassafe.
Yet I could clearly see us hiking in these very canyons, his large hand gripping my small one, leading me through the red rock formations. I’d never heard the sound of his laughter, but I could almost imagine it: this rumble, a gift from deep in his chest. The corners of his eyes would crinkle, and nothing—nothing—would pull me out of his orbit. Gravity itself would work to keep me glued to this man.
His heart was beating so, so fast. I could hear it, steady and strong against me. Did I make him nervous? Or was this whole fucked-up situation starting to get to him?
I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything anymore.
Theo
We stayed that way until the officers called us over, until the world required signatures and details and facts and the careful documentation of how two lives had changed forever.
I wasn’t even certain I knewwhichtwo lives I was referring to.
We gave our statements separately to different officers asking the same questions. By the time I looked up from signing my report, her car was gone. I’d never even asked her name.
Standing alone beside my old, dark green Subaru Forester, watching the tow truck disappear around the bend, I felt something I couldn’t identify. Not grief—I hadn’t known those kids. Not relief—I’d helped, but it hadn’t been enough.
Connection. Warmth. A shining beacon of light in the darkness.
According to the officers, the entire ordeal had lasted only thirty-seven minutes. And for thirty-seven minutes, I had not been alone with the weight of what had taken place. Someone else had understood, had shared the weight of that heavy burden with me.
That was a lot to a guy who was consistently used to being alone. All I understood before this night was insomnia and loneliness. Of rain that never stopped, not even when the sun was out.
I’d grown up here in Puente Hills, lived in a town where I couldn’t walk ten feet without running into somebody I knew, and yet—and yet.
I was alone.
I’d been alone a long, long time.
The rain stopped. My headlights lit up the empty road and refracted off a few pieces of glass the cleanup crew had missed. I drove home through a world that felt altered somehow. Different. I couldn’t say how.
At 4:37 a.m., I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, remembering how she’d felt in my arms. She’d anchored me, that woman. Anchored me when I’d gotten so used to floating away.
And in her eyes, I’d seen something I’d never witnessed in another soul: myself. The emptiness. The ache. The comfortable safety of loneliness.
I didn’t know her name. But I knew the feeling of her small body in my arms, the sound of her breathing, the warm, vanilla scent of her hair. I knew these things as clearly as I knew my own heartbeat, and somehow, that seemed both disturbing and significant, like a secret too important to forget.
No, I wasn’t forgetting her anytime soon. I couldn’t, I don’t think, if I even tried.
Chapter One
What Lingers
Wendy
Twodayslater,Thursdayafternoon
I told myself I was purely curious about the accident site as I turned onto Hacienda Road, my hands gripping the steering wheel tighter than necessary. I maneuvered the curves with practiced ease; driving had become second nature by this age, and sometimes I liked to forget just howoldI was starting to become, with age creeping up on me as chains I wasn’t certain I could break myself free from. Thirty-six, with grays prematurely lining my temple, fine lines overtaking the corners of my mouth and eyes. Age sat like a stone in the pit of my belly, impossible to ignore yet so, so easy to.
Just curious, I thought again, fluidly guiding my Honda down the road. The excuse sounded reasonable enough in my head: I wanted to see it in the daylight, wanted to understand what had really happened that night. It was natural to be curious, wasn’t it? After something like that?
The lie tasted as metallic as fresh blood on my tongue.
