“No, Carla,” she said, staring into her with teary eyes. “Not for a few hours. Not for the day. For…for…”
Carla swallowed, the pain so sharp it was clawing at her throat as it tried to escape.
“Okay.” She dropped her hand and backed away. She didn’t know how, but her body somehow managed to make it to the doorway. She braced herself on the frame, growing weaker by the second. Still, she turned, needing to say one last thing before she dragged her tattered self from Janice and her home once and for all.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, her voice strained. “I would’ve continued to protect you. Not because you’re helpless, but because I—love you. Even though that scares the shit out of me to feel and to say. But I’m feeling it. And I am saying it. I love you. And when you love someone you stand by their side and do your very best to support and protect them. I would’ve done that, Janice. I would’ve fought like hell for you. For us. And I never would’ve stopped. I never would’ve regretted doing so. Not ever.”
She left her alone then and walked into the spare bedroom to pack her things. She heard Janice close her door and she was sure she heard what sounded like crying. But she didn’t try to go to her. Not even when her heart and head screamed at her to. Because she couldn’t do what she wanted. She had to do what Janice wanted.
And what Janice wanted, was for her to leave her alone.
Chapter Twenty-six
The doorbell rang for what seemed like the hundredth time the past week. But Janice didn’t jerk with alarm at the threat of intrusion like she had previously. Instead, she remained where she was, spread out like a sorry sack of rotten potatoes on her couch, staring absently at a muted television screen. She thumbed the remote and scrolled through the channel menu, searching for something, anything that would hold her interest, while knowing all the while that what she was really searching for, she’d never find on a television, in her home, or anywhere in North Carolina for that matter. No, what she was seeking, she’d already found. But, thanks to her, it was now three thousand miles away.
The doorbell rang again and then gave way to knocking. She heard Maurine calling out for her, but she remained where she was, unaffected. Maurine began to pound. Call louder. Janice continued to stare at the television, her heart rate barely pulsing, pushing her blood along at the bare minimum.
She didn’t even shift her gaze to the door when she heard Maurine insert the key and unlock the bolt. Nor did she when Maurine clamored inside, slammed the door behind her and stood at the end of the sofa with her hands on her hips and a pissed off look on her face.
“So, what, now you’re deaf as well as depressed? What in the Sam Hill is going on with you?”
Janice considered not answering. She really didn’t have the strength or the will. But she knew Maurine wouldn’t leave if she didn’t speak.
“Nothing,” she said. It was true. There was literally nothing going on in her world.
“Oh, kiss my ass, will ya?” She crossed to the coffee table and started collecting the remnants of food containers and dishes that had collected from the past several days. “And since when are you such a slob?”
Janice shrugged.
Maurine took an armload into the kitchen and made way too much noise than was necessary for the job at hand. She was upset. And for some reason she didn’t think Janice had noticed. So she was doing her best to make sure she heard it.
She marched back into the living room and continued straightening the table. She stacked the magazines, most of them issues of Arizona Highways and Desert Living that Janice had often perused through dreaming of a life in the southwest. That dream still tugged at her, something she couldn’t seem to get past. Only now, when she thumbed through those magazines and saw the pictures of the beautiful desert sunsets and landscapes and the homes nestled against mountains, she could do nothing but imagine Carla there, living in that palm-treed paradise, going on with her life without her. And that was just too much to bear.
Even so, when Maurine finished stacking the magazines and picked them up, Janice panicked.
“What are you doing?”
“I was just going to put them away.”
“No. Leave them.”
“But the table’s so cluttered.”
“Leave them.”
She frowned and returned them to the table. “You can’t possibly be looking at all of them,” she said under her breath.
“Actually, I can hardly stand to look at any of them anymore. But I want them there.”
“Fine.” She started in on the books and Janice sat up and snapped at her.
“Don’t touch the books.”
Startled, Maurine stared at her like a puppy that had just been admonished for the first time. “Okaay. You gonna tell me you can’t read them either but for some reason want them right where they are?”
“I read them,” she said defiantly.
“All of them?” There were nearly two dozen.
“Sometimes I’m in the mood for different things. I like having a choice.” What she really did was return to well-known sections and reread them, needing whatever particular emotion that individual book and section invoked. She used to do that to reexperience the excitement she’d felt at the buildup and eventual release of passion between the two main characters. But now, when she reread those well-worn pages, she was often brought to tears. Nevertheless, she kept returning to those books, desperate for the rekindling of what she’d felt with Carla, even if it clenched her heart and made her cry. To lose those books, even just the sight of them, made her feel like she would lose Carla and what they’d shared.
Maurine threw up her hands and sighed. She rounded the table to settle on the love seat. Janice almost bit into her for sitting there, in Carla’s spot, but she caught herself. Maurine didn’t seem to notice her unease.
“When’s the last time you cleaned?” She was glancing around, frowning once again.
Janice shrugged.
Maurine stood.
“What are you doing now?’ Janice asked, and not very politely.
“I’m going to dust and run the vacuum.”
“No.”
“No?”
“You heard me.”
“Janice, what is wrong?” She returned to her seat. “Are you still upset over the whole Carla thing?”
Janice flinched, unable to help it.
“I told you I didn’t tell no one. I never will. It’s over. You can forget about it.”
Janice closed her eyes. She prayed for strength to fight back the tears that were still so painfully close to the surface. For the strength not to tear into her best friend, who, though she meant well, was slicing up her insides with every word.
“Has Carla called? Is that what’s wrong? She’s bothering you?”
Oh God, why does she have to keep saying her name? Please, make it stop.
“No,” she croaked. “I haven’t heard from her.”
But that wasn’t completely true. She’d received a post card day before yesterday. On the front was a beautiful photograph of a desert landscape at night. Complete with silvery sand, deep, purple, serrated mountains, dark cacti and hundreds of stars against a midnight blue sky. On the back, written in the elegant script she knew to be Carla’s, were the words Every night sky I see, regardless of where I may be in the world, still makes me think of you. Love, The Stargazer.