Page 98 of The Crush
To leave my small mark on a big wide world, to do something that mattered, to see things that others hadn’t. My plans were always five steps ahead of where I was standing. I was willing to leap without caring where I landed. All I needed was the chance. One hand on the steering wheel and one out the window as I drove down memory-imprinted backroads and figured out which one would get me out of there fastest.
Then I only wanted it to stop.
To leave this world with one less gaping wound, to get one step closer instead of two steps back. I’d already seen too much. I still leapt without caring where I landed as long as it was only me that broke at the bottom. I had one hand on a glass of whiskey and one hand on a set of files as I tried to figure out a way that not everyone had to lose even if we couldn’t win.
I used to have faith in things.
Now I just want to believe.
Seventy-Seven
Isabel
Wednesday, November 2, 1994
I’m not sure how long we stay out there in the hall, how long until I’m letting go only so that I can pull him to his feet and lead him into the bedroom.
“Don’t go to sleep yet,” I tell Daniel as I get him to the side of the bed, trying to move quickly because I’m not really sure how much longer he’s going to be able to help it. “Let me get you out of these clothes first.”
His eyebrows raise along with his head, his brown eyes fixing me with a look I know well, and I let out an exasperated sigh as my fingers start to fly over his shirt buttons. The corresponding shake of my head is as much at myself as it is at him because my body’s response to that look also happens to be one I know well.
“Don’t get any ideas,” I warn him, my tone far gentler with him now than it’s been since his truck pulled into the driveway. “We’re not done talking, your clothes smell like cigarette smoke from that office, and you’re clearly about three minutes away from passing out.”
“Plenty I could do in three minutes,” he tells me confidently, although the impact is lessened slightly by the way he sways when I push the loose button-up from his shoulders. He reaches a hand back to steady himself, turning when he encounters a hard surface instead of bedsheets.
“Sorry,” I mutter as he grasps the diary and brings it between us. “I was flipping through it before bed.”
Seeing him with it again, part of me wants to snatch it back so I can hide it away. The instinct so overwhelmingly strong after so long, but another part of me… I look at his face when he offers it to me. The lingering hurt, the persistent worry, the broken smile. And I want him toknow. Without being able to question it again.
My fingertips skim along the red ribbon holding the pages closed, but I don’t take the diary from his hands.
“You really think you have three minutes in you?” I ask, and he nods slowly, the growing curiosity on his face causing him to look more alert than he had a moment ago. I sit beside him on the bed, more nervous now without the sharp, frantic edge of desperation I felt when I’d practically flung it at him before.
“Do you remember that first night in the kitchen?” I ask him, knowing for certain that he at least remembers some of it. “I told you that you could talk to me because I’d read about things?”
He shifts slightly next to me, but he doesn’t move away. “Yes, I remember.”
“What did you think I meant?” I ask, trying to see if he will partially come to the conclusion on his own and hoping that might make it easier.
Daniel seems to weigh his words carefully before answering. “I figured you had read about Escobar. That’s the thing most peoplewant to hear about, so I assumed…you wanted to talk about that, too.”
I take the diary from his hands and unwrap the ribbon, opening it and movingrightpast the pages where I had repeatedly practiced my name with his. A lot.God, I did that a lot.Farther past the pages where I had written out all the other dreams I’d held. Farther past all the pages where I had tried to tell my own story even if I never seemed to have a say in how it was written.
At last, I stop when I reach the first one, an entry I’d pasted into the pages a few months after Daniel left during the summer of ‘86. The beginning of my vigil.Please let him be okay. Please just let him be okay.
I pass it back to him, watching him slowly scan the contents before he looks back at me. “Isabel…” he mutters. “What is this?”
Seventy-Eight
Daniel
The day Pablo Escobar died, I sat in my apartment and poured myself a drink. Prayed that a man who thought he was a god might finally feel the vengeance of one.
I called my dad and told him the news. I read the briefings and listened to the radio. And I waited. Waited for it to feel different.
But it never did. I already knew by then that the war would go on, just with different generals. I knew that many would continue to pay for the greed of a few. I knew that it wouldn’t bring her back. That nothing would erase what had already been written.
The diary in my hands is more proof of that.
