The second version of Brooks was the drunken, rude, asshole version. It was a side of him I didn’t know existed. He’d stumble home sloppy drunk so many times, and come my way, telling me how pathetic I was, and how I should’ve moved on with my life, because we’d never be together. We’d never have a future.
“I mean, look at you. You’re sitting here, waiting for me. What’s the matter with you?” he slurred, stumbling side to side in my doorway at three in the morning one night. “Stop embarrassing yourself, Magnet. This isn’t going to happen. Don’t you have some kind of list to get to?” He snickered and fell backward against the wall. “Or are you too afraid to do anything on your own?”
It was those nights when I wanted to leave the most. It was those nights when I wanted to throw in the towel and leave Brooks in his own misery.
But then I’d hold onto my anchor necklace and remind myself of how many times he stood by my side.
At night, I’d take baths, sink under the water, and remind myself. That’s not him. That’s not him. That’s not my love…
If I walked away from him when things became hard, what would that say about me? How would I ever forgive myself if his mind went so dark and he slipped away? On the days I needed him most, he always stood by me, and I owed it to him to do the same.
Being in love with someone didn’t mean you only loved them during the sunbeams. It meant you stood by their side during the cloudy nights, too.
He didn’t love the person staring back at him in the mirror anymore. He didn’t see the fun, charming, goofy person he used to be. He didn’t laugh anymore, and I struggled to remember the last time he smiled.
It was my job to remind him.
It was my job to be his anchor.
It was my job to stay and love him through it all.
On the days Brooks was at his worst, I had to walk away. I’d go into town and explore the small shops, yet I hadn’t known how hard it would be on my mind. I noticed everything—every smell, every noise, every person. My mind was on constant alert, warning me of the dangers of the world. The idea of not knowing what was coming from around the corner horrified me.
When a man accidentally bumped into me, I tripped over my feet and fell to the ground, cowering with fear. He apologized over and over again and tried to help me up, but I was too embarrassed to accept his help.
Since I couldn’t go back to the cabin, I’d gone to the place that most reminded me of home—the library. Each day I’d visit the Messa Library and sit in a back corner reading to take my mind off of the world. Mrs. Henderson always came by to visit me and slid me a piece of chocolate, winking my way. “No food or drink allowed in the library, but since you’re so good at almost blending in with the walls, I think we can let this slide.”
Thank you, I wrote.
“You’re more than welcome.” She pulled out the other chair at the table and paused. “You mind a little company today?”
I gestured for her to sit. Anyone who brought me chocolate each day was allowed to sit with me.
“What are you reading?” she asked.
I showed her the cover.
“Ah, Persuasion by Jane Austen. It’s one of my favorite pieces of her work. Second to only to Northanger Abbey.”
I nodded in agreement, appreciating Mrs. Henderson’s wise opinion of Austen’s work.
She went into her pocket, pulled out a piece of chocolate, and then popped it into her mouth. “I like to think that Persuasion is a perfect mix of profound moments stirred with wonderful entertainment.”
This woman understood what made for a wonderful story.
“So, I told you my husband was the sheriff here, yeah?”
Yes.
She smiled. “If you met Lucas, you’d think he was born from the sweetest piece of chocolate. His voice is so soothing and he has this rich personality that everyone instantly loves. He has a spark about him; when he walks into a room the energy shifts to a brighter place. He’s the love of my life, and I can tell that this Brooks is the love of yours, right?”
He is.
She popped another piece of chocolate into her mouth. “Ninety-five percent of my marriage has always been filled with happiness. Being married to Lucas was the best choice of my life, but there was a point in our story where that five percent showed up. We lived in an inner city, and Lucas was working nightshifts as a police officer. He hardly talked about the kinds of things he saw out there, but I knew they affected him. He started smiling less, he hardly laughed, and everything I did was somehow wrong to him. He shouted at me and yelled about ridiculous things. The dishwasher leaking water; the delivery boy tossing the newspaper into the bushes by mistake. Those sorts of things drove him crazy, and he hollered at me about it. I placed his anger on my shoulders, though, telling myself he’d had a tough day. My sweet Lucas had a tough work life. He worked a job where death was more common than life. He walked into houses sometimes where he’d come across children who lost their lives due to getting in the crossfire of their parents arguing. He was tired, so I took on his exhaustion. I told myself I was his rock, therefore I had to hold down the fort for both of us.”
I listened to her words, hardly blinking once.
“But the thing about rocks is even though they are strong, they aren’t invincible. You can’t allow someone to take a sledgehammer to a stone, without expecting it to begin to crack. It took a lot of work, but we came through it after I stood up for myself, reminding Lucas that I was his partner, not his punching bag.” Mrs. Henderson leaned in closer to me and placed a piece of chocolate into my hand. “I see it in your eyes, sweet girl. The way you’re holding his pain in your chest. The way you’re breaking while trying to appear strong. I’ve read some of the articles about Brooks and they are beyond harsh. Brooks is a gentle soul. That’s probably why all of this media attention is so hard on him. Gentle souls hurt the most when the world turn its back on them. That’s why your role to him is so important. You’re his truth. So, help him, but stand your ground. Don’t be his punching bag, Maggie. Love him, but love yourself, too. Just because he’s hurting doesn’t mean he gets to hurt you,” Mrs. Henderson said. “Promise me you’ll take care of yourself?”
I promise.
“Good.” She grinned, and we started talking about much happier topics.
“I don’t think I ever asked you what you plan on doing with your life. What’s your career path?” she asked me.
I’m actually enrolled in school to become a librarian.
Mrs. Henderson popped the last piece of chocolate into her mouth and gave me a wicked grin. “Well, sweetheart, I urge you to reconsider. If I can be quite frank with you, I think you talk too much to ever work inside of a library. Have you thought about becoming a politician? They talk all day even though they hardly ever have anything much to say.”
I smiled. The world needed more women like her. The world needed more people who were like the book Persuasion: a perfect blend of profound moments stirred with dashes of entertainment.
The following Friday, Brooks didn’t come home until two in the morning. It was pouring rain until around that time, and I couldn’t sleep, listening to the storm rolling through. I sat in the living room, listening to Mrs. Boone’s jukebox, playing song after song, waiting for the front door to open.
When it finally did, I gasped, listening to it slam.
Version two of Brooks came walking through the door, soaking wet and drunk from his time on the lake. “What the hell is this?” he hissed, looking over at the jukebox. With five large footsteps he went to the machine and unplugged it from the wall. “I don’t want to hear that.”
Grumpy.
Whenever I played music around him, he’d always force me to stop.
I walked over and plugged it back in.
I did want to hear it.
He stood up tall and puffed out his chest. “You can’t do that, Maggie. You can’t come here and play that shit.” He unplugged it again, and I plugged it back in.
“Goddammit, will you just leave? I don’t want you here. What don’t you get about that? I don’t want you here! You’re driving me insane. I’m sick and tired of this bullshit. I’m sick and tired of you trying to push yourself into my life, to make me feel better, to force me into something I’m not ready for. How fucking dare you?” he hissed, drunk and hurt. “For over twenty years I allowed you to be whatever you had to be to get through whatever you had to get through. I never pushed you, I never pressured you, but now you’re doing all of that to me. When you told me to leave years ago, I left you. I gave you your space. Why can’t you do that? You’re smothering me, trying to save me. But don’t you see? I don’t need you to save me. I don’t want to be saved. I’m done. I just want you to go home. Why can’t you fucking leave me alone?!”
My body trembled as his words sank in, slapping me hard.
He turned away, running his fingers through his hair, annoyed, pissed off.
The angrier he grew, the more annoyed I became. He unplugged the jukebox again, and I plugged it back in.
Every time I stepped near him, the whiskey on his breath sighed against me. With one final tug of the cord, Brooks shoved the jukebox with his right hand. “Enough! Why? Why the hell won’t you leave me the fuck alone when I let you be all those years ago? Screw your music, and your hope, and your list of things you want to do. If you’re waiting for me, it’s never going to happen, Maggie.” Each word was a hit, each word knocked me back. “You’re wasting your time, so just get the hell out of—”
“YOU PROMISED!” I screamed, my voice cracking as the words flew through my mouth. My hands flew over my lips, and my stomach tightened. Did I say that? Did those words come from me? Was that my voice? My sounds? My words?
His brown eyes were perplexed, confused by the sound, by my voice. I was just as confused. He lowered his stare to my lips and stepped in. “Say it again,” he begged.
“You promised.” I moved closer to him, unable to hide my trembling body. My stare fell to the ground before I looked up. “You promised me you’d be my anchor, and I always promised myself to be yours if you ever needed me. I’m here because of the promises we made, but right now I don’t even know who you are,” I whispered. “The boy I knew wouldn’t yell at me. Never. The boy I knew wouldn’t beat himself down so much.”
“Maggie.”
“Brooks.”
His eyes shut tight at the sound of me saying his name. “Again?” he asked.
“Brooks,” I murmured.
When he opened his eyes, I was closer. My fingers landed against his chest. “Brooks…please, don’t do this. Don’t keep pushing me away. I want to help you, but you keep punching me each day with your anger, your hurt, and I can’t take anymore. I can’t keep being your punching bag. Don’t do this to yourself,” I begged. “Don’t make yourself drown. It’s too much, and I should know. I’ve been drowning for years. You’re sitting here killing yourself each second, as if you were alone, but you’re not.” I took his hands and placed them against my chest. “I’m here. I’m here for you, but you gotta stop punching me with your words. You gotta stop acting like I’m the enemy in all of this.”
I dropped his hands, and he kept staring, stunned by my voice perhaps? Or maybe by the words my mouth produced.
“It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be really hard. I’m not backing down, but you don’t get to treat me like that, Brooks. You don’t get to become something you’re not. You’re not a monster. You’re the complete opposite of a monster. You’re gentle, and kind, and funny, and my best friend. You know this. So, I’m not leaving here until you find it again,” I said.
“Find what?”
I placed my hands against his chest, and gave him a gentle kiss on his cheek as I whispered. “Your voice.”
You promised.
Her voice. Her first words in years, and they were directed toward me due to her frustration. The truth behind those words kept me up all night. Along with the sound of her voice. I hated the fact that her voice came out when she was angered and hurting. I hated how I was the one who pulled her to that level.
What had I become?
“Maggie,” I whispered around five in the morning. I tapped her shoulder slightly as she lay asleep in bed. “Maggie, wake up.”
She stirred for a moment, before yawning and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She raised an eyebrow, puzzled.
“I know it’s early, but can I show you something?”
She nodded, and I wondered if I’d imagined her sounds earlier that night. She climbed out of bed, and I led her to the back of the cabin, down the dock, where I sat down. She joined me, sitting beside me.
Tilting her head, she narrowed her eyes at me, confused.
“Number sixty-seven on your to-do list. Watch a sunrise or sunset over the water.”
A small sigh escaped her lips, and she looked up at the dark sky that was slowly beginning to wake.
“You toss and turn in your sleep at night,” she said.
“Yeah. I know.”
“Do you wake in sweats, too? Sometimes does it feel like you’re drowning in the water and even though you know it’s not really happening, it feels like you’re there again?”
Quick nods. “Yes. Yes. Exactly. It’s hard to describe what’s been happening in my head. Everyone kept telling me I’d bounce right back, but the memories, the voices in my head…”
“They’re real. The voices. The flashes. The fears. All of it is real, Brooks, and no matter how often you try to describe it to a person who’s never been in a trauma, they won’t get it. What happened to you had to be terrifying. I know about the tossing and turning. I know about the sweats. I know how it feels as if it’s happening nonstop, every second of every day.”
My head lowered. “It’s been like that since you were ten?”
“Uh-huh. That’s why I couldn’t leave you. I know what it’s like to be afraid to begin again.”
“I feel stupid for my actions now…selfish. You’ve been dealing with this all your life, and never once were you cold. You never turned against anyone. I’ve been so shitty to you, Magnet. I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “Everyone deals with trauma differently. Just because I reacted to my issues in a different manner doesn’t mean you had to react the same way. What happened to you was traumatic, and I completely get you being afraid of music, because of what happened to you. You feel cheated. The one thing you love, you can’t yet have. But you’ll get there, Brooks. You’ll find your way.”
“I picked up my guitar the other day. It was just sitting in the corner of the room, and out of habit, I picked it up, and then remembered I couldn’t play. So instead of getting sad, I just got angry. I got drunk to stop the hurt. But after the buzz faded, the hurt was still there.”
“It’s going to hurt. It’s painful, it’s hard, and it just freaking hurts. It hurts for so long that sometimes you think the hurting will never fade. That’s kind of the beautiful part in the hurting, though.”
“What’s that?”
“The strength you find to keep going on. Even on the mornings when you think you won’t make it, by nightfall you realized that you could. That’s my favorite thing about life—that no matter what, it keeps moving on.”
“What’s your least favorite thing about life?” I asked.
She lowered her head for a minute in thought, before looking back at the sky. “That no matter what, it keeps moving on.”
My hand rested on the dock, and when her fingers found their way to me, we locked our hold together and looked up at the awakening cotton candy sky.
“I’m sorry.” I cleared my throat, feeling foolish. “I’m sorry for how cold and rude I’ve been, Maggie. You didn’t deserve any of that. I was just trying to push you away as I self-destructed. I didn’t want you to be around as it happened. The water was up to my neck, and I was ready to go under. Then, your voice pulled me up. Your voice saved me. I’m still pretty broken, but I made you a promise. I p
romised you one day I’d show you the world, and that’s what I’m going to do. I can’t swear that I won’t have bad days, but I promise I’ll fight for the good ones. I’ll fight for you, Magnet. The same way you fought for me.”
“You stayed by my side for twenty years, Brooks. I think I can handle you having a few rocky days.” She laughed, and I was in love with the sound. “Besides, you’ve seen my darkness. It’s only fair that I’d be able to see yours, too.”
“Your voice, Maggie…I don’t think you understand what it does to me.”
She laughed, and I fell more in love with her. “I wondered what I’d sound like. Do you like it?”
“Like it? I love it.”
“It’s not too…” She wiggled in her seat and scrunched her nose. “Squeaky? Or childish?” She deepened her voice to an unnatural volume. “I stood in the mirror last night practicing my seductive voice. Do you like it?”
I couldn’t stop laughing.
“You like it, don’t you?” she said, deep as hell and awkward as all get out. “You think this voice is sexy. You totally want to bang me.”
“I mean, yeah, but the voice could go. You sound like you’ve smoked fifty packs of cigarettes a day.”
She started giggling and nudged me in the arm. We laughed and talked as if the communicating back and forth without a board was normal for us. It was effortless. Truth was, if I could’ve sat quietly and listened to her voice for the rest of my life, I would’ve been happy.
She scooted closer to me as the sun started rising. “You okay today, Brooks?” she whispered, sending chills down my spine, asking me the question I’d asked her almost every single day of her life.
I squeezed her hand twice. Yes.
We didn’t speak another word.
Five minutes before she sat on my dock, I was completely lost.
Five minutes sitting across from her, I began to remember my way home.
Maggie still tossed and turned at night, too. Not as much as she used to, but still, she had nights of darkness that came her way. One night as we slept beside one another, I awakened to the sound of her dismay. She was whispering something to herself, her body drenched in sweat. I wouldn’t wake her because I knew there was nothing worse than being pulled out of one’s nightmares before they were ready to leave. I waited for her to come back to me.