Waindale

I sit in the corner of the shower and watch the tips of my fingers shift from blue as they warm. The water falls onto my legs from above like a million little punches or swift, passionate kisses. My head is clearing now. The fog has drifted and it’s easier to think.

I can feel Adam’s presence on the other side of the bathroom door. I’m conflicted once again; half of me wants him to hold me and run his hand down my hair, but the other half wants to remain cold. Although I was falling to pieces, it was easier without him. My purpose was clear—last as long as you can. My purpose isn’t clear now. I don’t know what to do, so I sit here and watch my hands like a mermaid studies her new legs.

“Wrenley,” I hear him call, his voice low and worn-down. “Will you come out of the bathroom?”

How long have I been in here? Adam put me in his truck, drove as I silently wept, brought me home, and I came straight in here. I pulled myself up the steps and went to the bathroom as if the plan to hide was already in my mind. The forest froze me and my head was spinning, so the shower seemed like a good option. And if I happened to cry again, maybe he wouldn’t hear me over the downpour. Sometime while I was hiding away in this corner, it started to rain outside. Now all I hear is the small but persistent sounds of pitter-pattering all around me—that, and Adam’s voice.

I reach above me and turn the shower off instead of giving a vocal answer. Exhausted, I slowly lift off the tiled floor and step out of the glass box. My hair is slicked back and hangs between my shoulder blades. My skin is the color of the alive and not the dead, and I hope I start to act like it too.

I wrap a towel around my body and open the bathroom door just a crack. Half of my face looks out. He’s standing there like I knew he would be.

“Can I have some clothes?” I ask, hushed.

I wait at the crack in the doorway until he comes back and hands me a small pile. After drying myself off, I shrug on the long sleeve and bring up the cozy sweatpants. I secure them by tightening the drawstring.

When I emerge, Adam is waiting on the bed. His gaze lifts to me, and mine trickles to the floor.

“What do you want to do?” He asks.

Of course, only the hardest question he could have possibly asked.

Adam continues, “If you want to leave, I’ll take you home.”

My bottom lip is held firmly between my teeth. Is there any point in fighting this? If I leave, I go back to lying to myself. I go back to shoving forkfuls into my mouth as I restrain myself from gagging. I go back to closing my eyes at night, pretending to be asleep. I go back to that cave of a room all to lay in darkness as he eats away at my mind. There’s no point in fighting him because every time I swing, every time I kick, I’m the one that’s being beaten up.

I walk past him to the other side of the bed. My hand brings back the comforter, and I get underneath it.

I hear him sigh.

This is it. This is forever.

Adam turns around and stretches along the bed to face me. “Come on, talk to me,” he says and places his hand on my arm, moving it up and down, trying to soothe me.

“I don’t—I don’t want to talk.”

His pretty face falls a little more. He lays on his stomach and holds up on his elbows. “I want you to be safe.”

“What I don’t know can’t hurt me? That isn’t real safety,” I counter. “How come you can do all of this to keep me safe, but when it comes to me worrying about you, it isn’t the same? How would you feel if I left in the middle of the night without telling you?”

Adam’s eyes stay hardened.

“What if I left and came home like you did—blood everywhere, bitten—and didn’t tell you what happened to me? How would you feel? How would you react? You know you would lose your shit, Adam.”

“I can take care of myself,” he says sternly.

“And I can’t?”

“No, you can’t.”

So much for not talking. Annoyed, I abruptly sit up and he does the same. “I can take care of myself. If you didn’t come after me, I could have made it.”

“When I found you, you were stumbling around the forest, smelling like liquor. When was the last time you ate? Slept? Don’t tell me that you can make it when you’re a zombie after three days.”

I clench my jaw. “I was still trying to get over what happened. You had to come looking for me because I know you’re scared that I can make it without you. You had to see for yourself that I was a mess so you could collect me, take me back, and know that I’d have no argument. Could you wait a week? Two? What if it starts to get better? That’s how heartbreak works—it’s bad for the first bit, but y-you bounce back.”

“You know it wouldn’t have gotten better,” he says lowly.

“So what? You have the nerve to sit here and tell me that I can’t take care of myself? You’re going to lecture me about how much I need you, then act like it isn’t a two-way street?”

Adam gets off the bed then. He heads for the door, so I instinctively get out from under the blanket and follow.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t want to fight with you,” he mutters.

Adam makes his way down the hall, so I quickly move past him and stand as a roadblock. “You wanted to talk, but since I’m not saying what you want to hear, you’re going to walk away? That’s not how this works.”

Adam moves past me and goes down the steps, but I remain hot on his trail. As he moves, he says, “You can’t take care of yourself, Wrenley. That’s the truth. You don’t know the kinds of things that are out there. You wouldn’t come home bloody if something attacked you—you would be dead.” At the bottom of the steps, he turns to me. His hands grip my upper arms, squeezing. “I can take care of myself because I’m a monster. This is all you are,” he says, his voice raised, his hold on me only tightening. “Y-You can’t defend yourself. You aren’t strong enough to fight. You aren’t fast enough to run away. This is all you are, and it scares the hell out of me.”

My eyes water yet I’m not sure if it’s from his grip or his words.

“So when I leave at night, stay in the house. When I refuse to tell you about all the things that could easily take you from me, understand why. When I say hide, you hide. When I say run, you run. Now understand, Wrenley. Understand why it has to be this way.”

He’s nearly shaking me at this point. The tears building in my eyes can’t help but spill. Adam brings me to his chest and wraps his arms around me. His hand rests on the back of my head, and with my ear pressed to him, I can hear his heart beating relentlessly.

He’s right. I can’t take care of myself, not when it comes to the big bad things that creep in the shadows.

“I wouldn’t last a day without you,” he breathes, “so let me protect you.”

I nod against him and he pulls away slightly. He looks down at me and I nod again with tears smeared across my cheeks.

Maybe he’s right about something else too. Maybe I don’t want to know what’s out there. I don’t want to know what sort of things would bring Adam to such desperation.

I call my mother and tell her that I’ll be with Adam tonight. It takes me a bit to explain everything to her—why I’m no longer heartbroken—but she lets this one slide. I suppose she believed me when I told her that what I have with Adam is forever. I couldn’t hang up before she said, “People fight. They argue. I would be worried if you didn’t.”

Over the weekend, Vivianne and Imogen pick me up from Adam’s while he’s busy. We go to the town center, the place with the many little shops, with the water and the boardwalk. We’re supposed to meet Eli and Elara at the end of the boardwalk, but Imogen stops when we walk by the ice-cream parlor. She heads inside, saying she’ll be just a minute.

“Who wants ice-cream outside in December?” Vivianne mutters. “We’re going to get hot chocolate at Barb’s.”

Barb’s is a small coffee place at the end of the boardwalk. Eli and Elara are already there, warm inside with steam wafting into their faces from their hot mugs.

We peer through the window to see what’s taking her so long. “Let me go get her,” Vivianne says and suddenly I’m out front alone.

I bounce on my heels, glancing back at the two girls every few seconds. The shop where I was gifted the moon goddess necklace is right next door. I walk over and look at the window displays of artwork with singular lights pouring down on them. When a man comes out of the shops’ doors, I mindlessly glance over, but the glance becomes a stare.

My brow furrows. The man must sense my unfaltering gaze because his head turns to me as well. He mirrors my same look of confusion.

“Wrenley?” He says. “Is that you? R-Rachel’s daughter?”

My lips part ever so slightly. “Um. Uh, yes. I-I am.”

Unease settles in my gut.

The man takes a step or two closer with his hands awkward in his jacket pockets. “Well, this is unexpected. I didn’t know your mother was back in Waindale.”

I swallow. “We moved here in the fall. A few months ago.”

“So, I’m guessing you know who I am then.”

“You’re John Aymon,” I say, my voice surprisingly clear. “Why are you here?”

“Well, I recently moved back. Last-week-kind-of recent, actually.”

Suddenly my jacket feels as if it’s shrinking. My breath gets caught in my throat. “Y-Your my Dad.”

The ice cream parlor door chimes behind me. I look back and see Vivianne walking out with Imogen and her three scoops of cookies and crème. Their eyes eventually find me, and their bodies go stiff when they see I’m talking to a stranger.

I turn back to John and say, “I—uh—have to go,” before returning to the girls and hurrying them down the boardwalk.

He looked like the school picture. That man was the guy whose face I pet with my finger.

That man was my father and he knew my name.

Why does he know my name?