Page 95 of The Crush
Maybe if I’d fixed it. Maybe if I’d kept my promise the first time. Maybe then I could have kept her, too.
“I want… I want you to be okay,” I tell her, my voice giving out a bit over the words. “You deserve to have the kind of life you want. I don’t want to keep you from that.”
“You wouldneverkeep me from that,” she says back, pressing her hands against my chest, and it takes everything I have not to cave right there. “Youarethat for me. I have wanted you for—”
“You shouldn’t.” My hands cover hers, giving myself that small lapse in my hard line. “I’m so sorry, Isabel. I should never have—”
“Don’t say it.” Her fingers grip my shirt, holding on to me like she’s afraid to let go, and I think I am, too. “What can I do to get you to understand? You stubborn, hard-headed,impossible…” She looks away, weighing something in her mind before she snaps, “Oh, fuck it!”
She jerks her hands from beneath mine before she storms around me and heads back for the porch, a string of additional curse words left in her wake. She disappears out the front door and then reappears a moment later, dragging her suitcase. She wrenches the zipper open, pulling something from inside before she shoves it at me, the item thudding hard against my chest, but it’s not until I look down at it in my hands that I realize it’s a book.
No, not a book, I realize as I examine it closer.A journal.One stuffed with uneven pages that aren’t its own, its light pink cover faded by age and by use, and a red ribbon wrapped around it and tied in a bow to keep it shut since the gold lock appears to have given up long ago.
“Isabel, is this your…”
“Yes, it is,” she replies, hot temper running at a boil. “Maybe if you read it you’ll actually understand what I’ve beentryingto tell you.”
“Read it?” I look at the journal again, still trying to catch up. “You want me to read your diary?”
“Not really,” she half yells, the extent of her frustration evident. “But I don’t know how else to make you see that it’salwaysbeen you. All these things you’re trying to keep from me? I already know about them, Danny. I always have. And I know it’s not the same as living it but…I would. I’ll go with you. If that’s what you really feel like you have to do, then I—”
“Isabel, I don’twantyou there.” The immediate hurt on her face makes my chest feel like it’s going to crack in two. “I don’t—I can’t.”
There’s a beat of deafening quiet before she nods, looking down at the floor as she takes her journal back. “Okay.” All the anger is gone from her voice now, and somehow, that’s so much worse.
“Isabel…I’m sorry.”
“You should…you should get some sleep. We’re both tired,” she says, still not looking at me as she turns away. “We can talk about it more tomorrow.”
“Wait, Isabel, I—” I get nothing else out before the hard shut of the bedroom door, loud enough to make both me and the lit candles on the ofrenda flinch.
“Fuck,” I mutter, pressing the heels of my hands against my face, now standing in the front room alone. “Fuck.”
My hands drop back down right as headlights pass through the front window, the familiar shape of my dad’s old truck pulling into the drive next to mine, and when I hear his truck door shut, I know I can no sooner avoid this conversation than the one I just had. Nor do I have much hope of it going any better.
Noticing me in the entryway once he opens the door, my dad looks me up and down with a frown as he steps inside, providing unneeded reassurance that I do, indeed, look like hell.
“Welcome home, Danny.” He glances at Isabel’s suitcase before he turns to shut the door. “Did you two talk already?”
“A bit. She’s…she’s in our room. I—”
My dad holds up a hand to quiet me before going to the front closet. He grabs a stack of spare blankets from the top shelf and tosses them on the couch before giving me another look and heading for the kitchen. “I hope that you didn’t need her to tell you how you messed up this time.”
“No,” I admit, following behind him until I reach the doorframe. I lean there, keeping myself standing while also keeping one eye on the bedroom door down the hall. “No, I know what I did.”
“Good.” I shift my focus back to my dad, where he stands near the back door replacing his truck keys on the hook. “How about you fill me in, then, on why you disappeared last night?”
Remorse roils in my otherwise empty stomach, worsening when I remember what Isabel said about him checking the roads. “I’msorry,” I say for what feels like the millionth time today, yet I know it should be a million more. “I should’ve told you where I—”
“You really going back?” he cuts me off, fixing me with a weathered gaze. “You’re leaving?”
I nod, staring down at my shoes. “They’ve offered to let me join their team in Colombia again. It’s what I wanted.”
“It’swhat you wanted,” he repeats, doubt evident. “Kind of seems to me they’ve been offering for a while, haven’t they? I know they’ve been calling the house. Monday mornings, right? But you decided in the middle of the night on a Tuesday that youhadto go back in?”
“I know the timing is bad,” I evade. “I can find some help to get you through the season with the ranch.”
“You think I give a damn about the ranch right now?” My dad comes to stand behind one of the kitchen chairs, his hand gripping the tall wooden back. His right looks banged up, the knuckles broken, and I wonder what he accidentally laid into before he reminds me, “I managed while you were gone before.”
