Coming Home

  “I feel like I can’t breathe without him,” she said, her chin trembling as the words left her mouth. “I miss him.”

  “Of course you do,” Holly said. “Let yourself miss him. Don’t fight that.”

  Leah nodded as two tears slipped over her lashes, and she swiped at them quickly.

  “But what you’ve been doing these past few weeks? That’s not missing him. That’s mourning him. There’s a difference.”

  Leah raised her eyes to Holly’s.

  “And I’m sorry, but I won’t let you do that. It’s not over for you guys. So there’s nothing to mourn.”

  “Holly—”

  “Remember when we were in seventh grade,” Holly said, cutting her off, “and N’SYNC was going to be on TRL? And we camped out in Times Square for two days so we could see them when they arrived?”

  Leah pulled her brow together as she swiped at another tear. “Yeah.”

  “And you had your whole plan. Do you remember?”

  The corner of Leah’s mouth lifted in a half-hearted smile. “Yeah. I was going to sing for Justin Timberlake so he would take me on tour with the band.”

  Holly laughed as she took another bite of her salad. “And what happened when he finally walked by you?”

  “You shoved me, and I face-planted in front of everyone.”

  “Hold on,” Holly said, holding up her hand, “what happened before that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what happened before I pushed you?”

  Leah shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “Nothing. And why not? You had a plan. You practiced for weeks trying to make your voice sound a little less like a cat getting a root canal.”

  Leah threw her napkin at Holly and she batted it away easily. “You were ready,” she said, not missing a beat. “So why didn’t you go through with it?”

  “I don’t know,” Leah said, sifting through her salad. “I panicked.”

  “Right. You freaked, and you bailed. So…I shoved you.”

  “And I landed flat on my face in front of him with my skirt practically over my head!”

  Holly pointed at Leah with her fork. “That wasn’t my fault. Who wears a skirt in the middle of January?”

  A breathy laugh fell from Leah’s lips as she looked down at her salad.

  “But you remember what happened after I shoved you, don’t you?”

  Leah sighed. “He helped me up and asked if I was okay.”

  “And?”

  “And he helped me back behind the barricade.”

  “And?”

  Leah smiled softly. “And he signed my CD, and I got a picture with him.”

  “Exactly. You’re welcome, by the way.”

  Leah laughed to herself as she twirled her fork between her fingers.

  After a few seconds of silence, Holly sighed in exasperation. “You still don’t get it, do you?”

  “Get what?”

  She gave Leah a patronizing look. “You had a plan. You thought you were prepared. But when it was go-time, you panicked. You got scared, and you bailed.”

  Leah blinked at her. “Okay?”

  “Jesus, Leah! You still don’t see it?”

  “See what?”

  “That Danny’s just panicking!” she shouted. “He thought he was prepared, and he wasn’t, and it scared the shit out of him, so he backed out! It’s the same damn scenario!”

  Leah stared at her friend, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. After a stunned second, she shook her head. “I don’t think—”

  “He loves you,” Holly interrupted, her voice softening significantly. “You know he does, Leah. I can see it in your face, even now. He’s just scared. That’s all this is.”

  Leah swiped at a fresh round of tears with shaking hands.

  “He just needs someone to shove him. Hard.”

  Leah laughed through a sob as she wiped her nose with her napkin, and Holly smiled as she picked her fork back up.

  “So,” she said, looking pointedly at Leah. “Are you gonna shove him?”

  Leah inhaled deeply as she picked apart her napkin. “I don’t know,” she said softly. “I don’t know if I can. If he even wants me to. I don’t know anything anymore.”

  “Alright then, here’s the deal, chica,” Holly said, her expression turning serious. “I’m going to give you as much time as you need. I’m going to let you miss him. I’m going to let you cry rivers upon rivers if you feel like you need to, and you can talk about him as much as you want, until his name sounds like nails on a chalkboard if it makes you feel better. But I will not let you keep doing what you’ve been doing these past few weeks. If this is gonna get fixed, then one of you has to keep it together. And I don’t think it’s fair to expect it to be him.”

  Leah swallowed before she nodded slowly.

  “Okay then,” Holly said with a nod. “Now let’s finish these salads so we can go get some shoes.”

  They spent the next hour at the mall, looking for shoes to go with their new dresses, and the entire time, Leah kept replaying Holly’s words over in her mind.

  They swam through her, collecting the little splinters in her chest so that each subsequent breath seemed a little easier to take.

  If this is gonna get fixed, then one of you has to keep it together.

  She wanted to fix it—more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life—but she felt the same way Holly looked the day she tried to put together Evan’s entertainment center: the instructions were in front of her, all the tools right there at her disposal, and yet she didn’t know where to begin.

  When Holly dropped Leah off a little while later, she gave her a hug and told her she would call her the next day, and Leah walked up the path and through the front door to the utter paradox that was her apartment. It was the only place she felt at peace, yet at the same time, it was an endless source of torture.

  The fact that Danny had spent every night and practically every day at her apartment for a month before he left made his absence that much more jarring.

  His memory was all around her, in every single room.

  Leah walked back to her closet and hung up the bag that held her dress before she kicked off her shoes and climbed into her bed, pulling the comforter up to her chin.

  And then she closed her eyes, drifting off to sleep as Holly’s words continued to course through her, gradually collecting little pieces of her fragmented heart.

  “The following people have been requested at the visitor’s center: Benjamin King, Daniel DeLuca, Michael Moroney, Steven Logan, Kevin Driscoll, and Duane Tanner.”

  Danny stood from his chair, putting his playing cards on the table. “You just got lucky,” he said, revealing his hand.

  Theo lifted his brow at Danny’s straight flush. “Well, shit. Thank your visitor for me.”

  Danny smiled as he turned to exit the rec room. If Jake had shown up just five minutes later, Danny would have undoubtedly won the pot.

  Thirty-seven postage stamps.

  It was their only real form of currency, and something most prisoners took very seriously. Rory, the inmate-turned-barber, charged five stamps per haircut. Terrence, the guy who ironed prisoners’ jumpsuits on visitation days, charged three stamps for his services. Any favor asked, any bet made, typically involved an exchange of stamps. After two months in this place, Danny still felt like a kid playing with Monopoly money.

  He approached the inmates’ entrance to the center, noticing that Marco was the guard outside today. He nodded a hello to Danny before he opened the door and gestured for Danny to enter.

  “Arms out, please,” he said, and Danny lifted his arms.

  “You catch that game last night?” Marco asked as he patted Danny down.

  Danny gave a short laugh. “Yeah. I wish I didn’t.”

  “Unbelievable,” Marco said. “Highest payroll in the MLB. Sure as shit didn’t look like it yesterday.”

  “A lot of those guys
haven’t been hungry for a long time,” Danny said, turning so Marco could pat down his other leg. “These owners throw money at their best guys, forgetting that money makes some people complacent.”

  Marco lifted his brow before he inclined his head in acknowledgement. “Very well-said.” He straightened, and Danny dropped his arms. “Alright, who you got today?”

  “A buddy of mine,” Danny said.

  Marco nodded as he checked his watch and then recorded the start time of the visit on his clipboard.

  “Alright then, Mr. DeLuca,” he said, reaching forward and opening the door for him. “Enjoy your time.”

  “Thanks,” Danny replied as he stepped around him and through the door.

  He walked into the visitor’s center and turned toward the table and chairs set up near the vending machine where Jake typically preferred to sit, only to find an older couple seated there, waiting for an inmate.

  Danny smirked as he realized Jake would have to walk a full fifteen feet to get his Skittles now. He typically went through four or five bags per visit, as if they were a luxury he could only get there and not something he could pick up in twenty different places on the way home.

  Danny turned, scanning the other side of the room for him.

  And then he froze.

  She was sitting at the far table against the window, her eyes on him as she rolled her mother’s bracelet between her fingers.

  It had been over a month since he’d seen her—over a month since he’d had any contact with her whatsoever—but the sight of her hadn’t even come close to losing its potency.

  He couldn’t afford this kind of test today. His daydreams of her, when they were furtive enough to creep in uninvited, were bad enough.

  Ironically, his worst days in this place were the days he found it the easiest to be without her. At his lowest points, Danny managed to find solace and comfort in being alone—in knowing that the only person he stood to hurt was himself. The days he felt demeaned to the point of detachment, the days his thoughts ran rampant through dark corners and bleak paths for hours at a time, unable to resurface, the days he struggled to even remember a life outside these walls—those were the days he was so grateful she was out of his life. In a way it was pacifying, knowing he could spin as far out of control as he wanted with absolutely no consequences for her.

  But then there were other days.

  Days that Danny somehow made it to “lights out” feeling somewhat like himself. Days he was able to keep a rein on his thoughts, steering them out of sinister waters. Days when he could see an end in sight—no matter how far off it might seem—and all at once there was something to strive for.

  Those were the days his heart felt like it was being shredded.

  Because when things were good, he thought about her constantly. Wondering if he’d made the wrong decision. How she was holding up. Whether or not she was angry with him.

  Wondering if there was even the slightest chance she might take him back when this was all over.

  He wasn’t sure it would even be possible to earn back her trust after everything he’d done, but on his good days, Danny promised himself he’d exhaust every avenue and deplete every resource trying.

  And today had been decent for him, which meant it was a horrible day to attempt a conversation with her.

  He couldn’t allow this temporary sense of well-being to sway him, because tomorrow, it could be gone, and there would be no way to guarantee if or when it would come back.

  Danny watched her shoulders rise as she took a deep breath, but her expression remained impassive as she watched him standing there, rooted to the ground.

  He tried to summon the resistance he’d relied on so many times when the need for her pulled at him relentlessly. The same power that prevented him from dialing her number, despite the amount of times he’d gone into the call room to do exactly that. The same resistance that prevented him from sending her emails, despite the fact that he’d drafted several, only to delete them before logging out of the system.

  Danny knew it wouldn’t be fair to allow the good days to give either of them false hope. He couldn’t call her on a good day and then abandon her when he was pulled back under. He couldn’t email her one day and then ask her to leave him alone the next.

  And so he resisted every urge he had to reconnect with her.

  But she was here. And he could feel the unmistakable tug in his body, his heart galloping in his chest.

  He wanted so desperately to know what she was thinking in that moment. Why she had come. But he had absolutely no idea what the past month had looked like for her.

  The one time Danny had given into an impulse and asked Jake about Leah, Jake’s response had been a lengthy tirade focusing on what a complete asshole Danny was being.

  He vowed then and there never to bring her up with Jake again.

  And he knew better than to ask Gram about her. She wouldn’t be as blunt as Jake, but her quiet disappointment in Danny’s decision would be even more cutting in its own way.

  Danny didn’t need a lecture from anyone. He knew he was doing the right thing by letting her go, no matter what anyone else thought. No one else was in there with him. No one else was living his every day. So how could they even pretend to know what was best?

  As he stood there, watching her watch him, there was a split second where he contemplated turning around. No good could come of this visit with her—he knew that—but the thought of walking away from her made his gut wrench. It was excruciating enough when he’d done it the first time, and he hadn’t prepared himself for the task of doing it again.

  She wasn’t supposed to come back here.

  He felt himself take a step in her direction before he’d even made a conscious decision to move, and then she stood, releasing her mother’s bracelet as her hands fell to her sides. He watched her curl and uncurl them into fists a few times before he lifted his eyes back to hers.

  Now that he was closer, he could see the emotions fighting for control on her face: a knotty combination of sadness, fear, and determination.

  Danny reached for the chair across from her and pulled it out. He could hear his heart beating in his ears as he sat before her, and Leah lowered herself into the chair, pulling her lower lip between her teeth.

  For a few seconds, they sat there in silence.

  Danny cleared his throat softly. “Jake?” he asked.

  “Knows I’m here,” she responded softly, and Danny looked down and nodded slowly.

  Silence.

  “He said I could have his visit if I promised to bring him back some Skittles.”

  Danny laughed before he could stop himself, and he glanced up to see her smiling uneasily. She reached up and tucked her hair behind her ear, and then her smile dropped at the same time her eyes did.

  Leah took a deep breath, her eyes on her lap as she said, “A long time ago, I asked you to stop playing games. And you promised me that you’d never lie to me.” She looked up and met his gaze. “I came here because I need to know the truth about something.”

  Danny nodded once. “Okay.”

  She wet her lips, the determination temporarily winning out in her expression. “Why did you break up with me?”

  Danny closed his eyes before he exhaled. Goddamn it. He’d been prepared to answer any question but that one.

  “Leah,” he said weakly, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “I want you to tell me the truth.”

  The seconds ticked by, hollow and unforgiving.

  “Is it because you really don’t want me anymore?” she asked.

  Danny rubbed his hand over his eyes. “Don’t do this, Leah.”

  “It’s a simple question,” she said, completely undeterred by his plea. “All I’m asking for is honesty.”

  Danny looked down at his hands. There was no answer he could come up with that wouldn’t send him down a path he refused to travel down with her.


  “Are you afraid the truth will hurt me?” she asked. “Don’t be. Nothing you can say now will hurt me more than the words you said last time.”

  Danny’s head snapped up; her eyes were on him, her expression unapologetic.

  Her words hung in the air between them, acrid and insufferable, and Danny had to look away. He could feel little pinpricks in his chest, shame and self-loathing battling for control in his body.

  “Do you still love me?” she asked.

  He took a breath before he looked across the table at her. This time, there was nothing behind her eyes but vulnerability, and he knew if she deserved an honest answer to any question, it was this one.

  “Yes,” he said gently.

  “And do you still want to be with me?”

  “Leah—”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Enough of the run-around. I want an answer, Danny. Because all of this,” she said, gesturing around them, “is only temporary. Don’t lose sight of that. And when this is over, what do you want? Do you want to start a new life with me? Do you want to come home to me every day? Do you want to have dinners with me, and go grocery shopping with me, and watch crappy TV together, and make love to me while we listen to our song? Do you want to get Christmas trees together, and go on vacations, and have babies? Do you want to take bubble baths with me, and teach me things in the garage, and hold me every night while we fall asleep?”

  Danny’s chest constricted, squeezing and compressing with vice-like intensity until it sent his heart up into his throat. What she had described was so agonizingly beautiful, it felt like there wasn’t enough room in his body to accommodate it.

  It had been so long since he’d allowed himself a fantasy of that caliber. Dreams like that cost too much to entertain inside these walls.

  But her words were warm and palliative in his veins, and for a moment, envisioning what she described didn’t feel torturous. It wasn’t a cruel act of masochism. It wasn’t a hopeless pipedream.

  Because Leah was sitting in front of him, momentarily turning that fantasy into a promise.

  He should have been used to it by now; from the moment she came into his life, she started reviving him—making him feel again, making him appreciate things, helping him learn how to forgive himself, making him think he was someone worthy of love. And here she was, offering to save him all over again.