Jake and I hugged tightly and I told him that I’d see him in the morning. Then, it was just Audrey, Freddy, and me, in a house that, to me, instantly felt more relaxed and airier. But when I turned to face Audrey, to say all the things I’d been holding in since dinner, I found an annoyance I couldn’t previously have envisioned her displaying. But seeing it now, it left me disconcerted and eager to fix whatever the hell it was that was bothering her, just to make her smile again. Her face was made to smile.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, searching her eyes for clues.
My expectations were set on her not replying or skirting around the issue, the way so many women do. Cee had once spent an entire work day in a pissed off silence, and it was only the next day that she’d told me it was because I had unwittingly used the last roll of paper towels. So, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Audrey had taken this opportunity to shut down and make her exit, but she wasn’t like other women, was she?
“I thought you were kidding when you said you don’t celebrate your birthday.” Her voice was strangled by her disappointment and despair, and to make her feel better, I shook my head and replied, “I told you, I don’t like to acknowledge it.”
That wasn’t good enough for her, though. “But your parents should want to,” she said, practically whispering against the emotion building a barricade in her throat. “I don’t care if you don’t want to; they should insist on it.”
She stood up with an impressive control, taking the cake plate from the table and carrying it to the counter. Then, with her back to me, she continued to say, “I can’t believe they didn’t even wish you a happy birthday.”
I glanced at Freddy, who was sitting at the kitchen table with a book from Jake’s room, and took the chance to approach Audrey at the counter. It was just over a week since I had stood at this counter and contemplated my next move, before rushing at her with an aggressive kiss. Now, the very thought of kissing her made me crazy with nerves and anxiety, but it still wasn’t too far from my mind as I stood next to her, hands on the counter and eyes on the cabinet in front of me.
“They texted me this morning. It’s fine.”
“Texting you isn’t the same as giving their son a hug and wishing him a happy birthday.”
My fingers moved busily against the countertop. “I don’t know why this is bugging you so much. It doesn’t matter to me, seriously. I don’t care.”
With the turn of her head, her golden hair left her shoulder, cascading over her back and exposing the length of pristine skin along her neck. A swarm of attacking bees filled my gut at the thought of leaning in to press my lips there. They stabbed, warned, and reminded me that we were sober, and that she might not want me in that way, not right now.
“It is so sad that you don’t care,” she whispered, and I replied in a matched tone, “I said it doesn’t matter.”
“But it does,” she replied in a voice so harsh it surprised me. “Do you know how much my parents would love to wish my sister a happy birthday, to her face, just one more time? Do you understand what they would give to have that chance?”
I shook my head. “No. I can’t pretend to know or understand what that’s like for them.”
Her nod was slow as an unknown understanding sunk beneath her skin. “And I’m telling you that it’s horrible for your parents to have allowed you to feel like this.”
I scoffed, feeling attacked and criticized. “Feel like what?” I spat defensively.
Audrey lifted the cake back into its bakery box and closed it before facing me with one word: “Unworthy.”
Leaving me stupefied at the counter, she put the cake in the refrigerator and left the room, as I slipped into a contemplative void.
Unworthy? It honestly wasn’t far from the truth. I certainly didn’t feel worthy of celebration or praise, everybody knew that and Dr. Travetti reminded me of it on a regular basis. In fact, as I spiraled through shards of memory, the good doctor’s scrawled message zigzagged across my mind, “Why won’t he give himself a chance?” None of it was a lie, but I’d never once wondered from where this poisonous mindset had come from. Never once had I thought to become a cliché and blame my parents for drilling it into my brain that I was a monster. Not until Audrey said something, and now I wondered, did she see something I’d been blind to for years?
Her footsteps sounded behind me, I’d know them anywhere by now, and she came to stand beside me once again. In her hands was a present, and at the sight of the colorful paper and spiraled ribbon, a wave of nausea and anticipation struck my gut.
“You might not care, but I do.”
“You have no obligation to care,” I stated, so emotionless, it irked me. “You barely even know me, Audrey. There is no reason whatsoever for you to waste any of your time caring about m—"
“Please shut up,” she said, and so I did. “I don’t know my mailman at all, Blake, and I wish him a merry Christmas and a happy birthday, because every life, every day, should be celebrated. It’s all precious and sacred.”
With a sordid scoff, I shook my head, despite hearing her and wanting so much to wrap myself in her words and believe in them. To believe in something. To believe I wasn’t a monster, but just a guy who caused a horrific accident over twenty years ago. “Yeah, I bet everybody thought Jeffrey Dahmer was precious and something to celebrate, too.”
“Jeffrey Dahmer was still someone’s son, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she celebrated him every day,” she retorted with more warmth than such a sentence deserved. “You don’t have to condone the actions of your children to maintain that unconditional love.”
“Is that what the Bible taught you?”
She was silent and when my eyes met hers, I found a glare that knocked me down to the level of a snake, slithering on its dirt-covered belly. She shook her head and opened her mouth, that gorgeous, terrifying mouth, to speak. “You can try and push me away with that garbage all you want, Blake. You can even try to make me hate you as much as you hate yourself. But I am telling you right now, it’s not going to work.”
“You’ll give up eventually,” I challenged her.
“You’d have to do something really horrible to me, to make me give up on you. And the garbage you say when you’re angry isn’t gonna cut it.”
“Why the hell not?” I asked, unsure there had ever been someone alive more frustratingly gorgeous than her in that moment.
“Because you’re wrong, Blake. I do know you. And I know that you aren’t the crap you say.”
My defenses eased as I relented with a sag of my shoulders. “Yeah? And how the hell do you know that?”
“Because while you think you stole everything from your brother, he gave you a heart. And I can see how good and beautiful it is. It’s in your art, and in your devotion to him. And those are the most honest things about you.”
My lips curled between my teeth, battling the urgency to grab one of the liquor bottles on the shelf within reach. “Even Jeffrey Dahmer had a heart,” I pushed out through a startling clot of emotion.
“Yeah,” she replied with a somber nod, “but it wasn’t Jake’s, and there isn’t anything impure about that.” And that was a point I couldn’t argue.