Back to You

  “I’m not making fun of you,” he added. “I genuinely want to know. I don’t know about this kind of stuff. Does it really make a difference if someone is there?”

  In that second, Lauren could have kicked herself. She felt so stupid and selfish, complaining that her parents would miss one meet, when Michael’s parents had been missing out on things his entire life.

  She shrugged nonchalantly, trying to belittle the situation. “It’s not that big of a deal. I just feel like I do better when I know someone I care about is watching me. I guess it’s like… motivation to make them proud or something.”

  She looked over at him and saw that his expression had turned thoughtful. “Yeah, I get that. But what about just doing it for you?”

  She smiled. “You’re right,” she said, trying to look away before he could see it was forced.

  She should have known he wouldn’t buy it.

  “Alright, that’s it,” he said, jumping down off the wall and turning toward her. “Let’s go.”

  “Go?”

  “Yep. Off the wall,” he said as he turned and walked toward the parking lot.

  “I have to catch the bus,” she called after him, and he waved his hand behind him dismissively.

  “I’ll take care of it. Let’s go,” he said, not even turning to see if she was following him.

  She watched him for a second before she rolled her eyes and jumped off the wall with a huff.

  “Where are we going?” she asked when she finally caught up to him.

  “For a ride,” he said, waving his hand like a game show hostess in front of something that looked like it used to be a car a long, long time ago.

  “Whose is this?” she asked, looking over the black hatchback that was missing two hubcaps and covered in scratches and rust spots of varying sizes and colors.

  It looked like a Jackson Pollock.

  “Mine,” he said matter-of-factly, walking around to the driver’s side.

  “Since when?” she asked.

  “Since now.”

  Lauren lifted her eyes to his. “Did you steal this?” she asked, and he tilted his head.

  “Come on now, Red. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “So you paid for this? That’s actually worse than stealing it.”

  He laughed out loud, flipping her off over the top of the car. “Quit being such a bitch and just get in the car,” he said through his smile, opening his door. “Wait,” he said suddenly, holding his hand up to stop her. “You’ve had a tetanus shot, right?”

  Lauren tried not to laugh as she pulled open the passenger door, cringing when it made a sound like a dying whale.

  But it was nothing compared to the sound the car made when he started it.

  As she put on her seatbelt, she flinched again. “That sounds like a broken blender,” she yelled over the noise.

  “It’s great, isn’t it? This guy down the road from me was gonna junk it. Sold it to me for a hundred bucks,” he added before he switched gears, and Lauren cupped her hands over her ears and hoped it was a short drive to wherever they were going.

  As they pulled out of the parking lot, she couldn’t help but notice the stares they were getting from the other students. She told herself it was just the eyesore of a car and the deafening, metallic clanking it made as it chugged out of the lot, but the truth was, she knew they’d be getting that look even if they’d been merely walking together.

  She didn’t understand how people hadn’t gotten over it by now.

  They’d been friends for almost four months, and still people acted shocked when they were spotted talking in the halls, or sitting together at the pizzeria.

  Or driving off campus together.

  Fine. She could recognize the hint of controversy in that last one, but nevertheless, it didn’t make sense that they were still fodder for gossip. Lauren Monroe had befriended Michael Delaney, and she hadn’t ended up dead, or on drugs, or been arrested, or joined a cult. The whole thing should have been pretty boring, actually.

  After about five minutes of driving, Michael finally pulled the car over and cut the engine, and the sudden silence made her ears ring.

  “Here we are,” he said as he exited the car, and Lauren got out, wiggling her finger in her ear.

  “I feel like I just left a concert,” she mumbled.

  “God, you really got your panties in a bunch today,” he said with an amused laugh as he opened the chain-link gate in front of them and gestured for her to go first.

  It finally dawned on Lauren that they were at the community park.

  “Why are we here?” she asked as she looked up at him. “I didn’t even think this place was open in March.”

  “Well, apparently it is,” he said, nodding toward the open gate. “Go.”

  She glanced at the empty park before looking back at him, and he stood there watching her, waiting.

  “Okay,” she sighed, walking into the park, and she heard the gate clang shut behind them as he followed her.

  “To the slide,” he said, and she walked around the swings to the left and stood beside it, turning to look at him. “Go ahead,” he added, motioning for her to climb it.

  She looked at him like he was crazy, but he was watching her, his expression even.

  “Um, okay?” she said stoically before she climbed the ladder and sat down at the top of the slide. “Why am I doing this again?”

  “Because I asked you to. Go ahead.”

  She shook her head before she pushed off the top and slid down to the bottom. As soon as her feet hit the floor, she looked up at him.

  The corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. “No, that was horrible. Do it again.”

  “Michael,” she said, annoyed. “I’m freezing. Can you just tell me what the point of this is?”

  “Yes. As soon as you go down again.”

  Lauren pushed off the slide in a huff, and she heard him chuckle behind her as she climbed the slide again.

  “Put your arms up this time. And say ‘wheee’ when you come down.”

  “No,” she said as she positioned herself at the top of the slide.

  “Just humor me, please,” he said, his smile gone. “This is serious.”

  She stared at him for a second before she nodded. “Fine,” she said softly, and she pushed off the top and lifted her arms. “Wheee,” she deadpanned pitifully, and as soon as her feet hit the sand below, he burst out laughing.

  “My God, that was pathetic. Get over here,” he said, grabbing her wrist and pulling her off the slide.

  “Is the point of this to make me look like an idiot?” she said as he dragged her away.

  “No, that’s not the point, but it’s definitely a plus,” he said through his laughter, and she reached over and smacked him with her free hand.

  “Here,” he said, backing her into one of the swings, and she grabbed the metal chains on either side as he came up behind her, gripping the chains just above her hands. And then he took several steps backward until she was as far back as the chains would allow.

  Michael leaned forward so that his chest was pressed against the length of her back, and her breath caught in her throat. “Ready?” he said in her ear, and before she could respond, he shoved her forward with such force that she lost her stomach; Lauren squeezed her eyes shut as she gripped the chains tighter and curled her knees up to her torso.

  As she swung back, she felt his hands on her lower back, cushioning her descent and sending her right back up, even higher than before. The cold wind whipped her hair around her face, and as her stomach dropped again, she laughed.

  She careened back toward Michael and this time he caught her by the hips, gripping them firmly as he ran forward and gave her a vigorous push as he darted underneath her. Lauren flew up higher than she’d ever been on a swing set, and she screamed, followed by unbridled laughter.

  “There ya go,” he said with a smile, walking back over to the swings and sitting on the one next to hers.

>   Lauren began pumping her legs, keeping herself going as her height gradually lessened, and she looked over at him and smiled.

  “You feel better?” he asked.

  “I do, actually.”

  Michael pushed off with his feet, rocking gently in the swing. “Whenever I’m pissed off about something, I always think to myself, ‘What do I feel like doing right now?’ And then I go and do it, whatever it is. Screw everyone else, ya know?” He looked over at her with a smirk. “And just now, I felt like coming here.”

  “Well, I guess that’s better than kicking someone’s ass.”

  “Hmm. That’s debatable. It depends on whose ass I’m kicking.”

  Lauren laughed and shook her head as she pumped her legs, making the swing go a little faster.

  “See, Red? When life hands you lemons, you know what you gotta do now.”

  “Wow,” Lauren said. “Yes, Mr. Cliché, I know what I have to do. I make lemonade.”

  “No,” he said. “You scream, ‘Fuck you, lemons!’”

  Lauren whipped her head toward Michael, her eyes wide, and she quickly scanned the park, forgetting for the moment that it was the dead of winter and no one else was there.

  “God,” she said with a horrified laugh.

  “And then you throw those goddamn lemons into oncoming traffic, and you go do what you want to do.”

  She tried not to laugh, but it was pointless, and as soon as she broke, he laughed along with her. She turned to look at him sitting on the swings next to her, rolling from the balls of his feet to the heels as he rocked himself in the swing.

  Lauren wondered if she’d ever stop being floored by these moments. It was almost surreal. He’d been suspended three times in the four months they’d been friends, and two of those were for fighting on school grounds. She’d seen the way others looked at him, the way they avoided him, and she’d seen the way he carried himself around those people. The look in his eyes changed, his posture changed. It was like he was actually someone else.

  And it was so strange, because the truth of it was, the infamous Del was just Michael to her, the boy who was quickly becoming her best friend in the world.

  And that weekend, as Lauren stood at the edge of the mat chalking her hands, her eye was drawn to the stands, where one spectator stuck out like a sore thumb.

  He sat on the highest bench, a sharp contrast to the adults sitting demurely in the rows before him, with his backward baseball hat, his overly casual posture, and his arm draped over the back of the bleachers as he absently drummed his fingers against the wood.

  All her breath left her in a rush, and she shook her head slightly in disbelief.

  His eyes were scanning the mats below, and when he finally made eye contact with her, she grinned up at him and waved.

  And when he winked at her, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that from that moment on, she would do anything for him.

  She turned then, walking to the other side of the mat as she got ready to make her run, her adrenalin racing because she knew he was watching.

  And she couldn’t help but smile at the irony of the fact that the baddest boy in school could somehow always make her feel like the world was good.

  October 2011

  Lauren couldn’t concentrate to save her life.

  She sat in the back of her Psychological Defense Mechanisms class, her pen poised on her notebook as if she was getting ready to write, but her mind was a million miles away.

  Actually, her mind was just a few miles away, back at Adam’s office.

  Earlier that afternoon, he had suggested a more aggressive stretching routine to counteract the core exercises she was now doing. Lauren had laid on her back as Adam took her leg and lifted it straight up, slowly but surely pushing it closer to her chest, all the while explaining to her how certain hamstring stretches actually release the lower back rather than the legs. As she grew more comfortable, he leaned over and pressed the front of his shoulder to the back of her leg, using some of his body weight to increase the intensity of the stretch.

  And that was the moment Lauren’s mind kept going back to: looking up at him as he leaned over her.

  With her leg propped up on his shoulder.

  “…Can be found in chapter six of your textbooks. These two are most commonly confused, and can often exist simultaneously in a person’s psyche,” Lauren heard her professor say as he gestured toward the screen behind him, and she blinked quickly, snapping out of it as she sat up a bit straighter in an attempt to regain her focus.

  Two words were projected on the large screen in the front of the lecture hall: repression and suppression.

  “Both are Freudian concepts concerned with removing unwanted or unpleasant memories from one’s conscious, but the difference between the two is that suppression involves the cognizant desire to forget, whereas repression happens subconsciously.”

  Lauren made a shorthand notation of that on her page as the professor continued, “Now, either one of these methods in moderation can be considered healthy. It’s only when they occur in extremes that they hinder a person’s emotional development and impede their ability to heal from traumatic events.”

  She chewed on the corner of her lip, writing that down as her mind shifted away from Adam’s office and back to the place it usually did as she sat in these classes.

  Right back to him. Always to him.

  “Now, believe it or not, most of the time, it’s easier to work with someone who is suppressing painful thoughts rather than repressing them. Since repression is a subconscious method of protection, oftentimes the subject will not even be aware that the element being repressed even exists, which lends itself to denial. However, with suppression, the subject is well aware of the issue; he just chooses to avoid dealing with it.”

  Lauren sighed softly.

  It was just so classically Michael.

  She’d never admitted it out loud to anyone—in fact, she’d never even officially admitted it to herself—but it was Michael who made her want to go into child psychology. She couldn’t help but feel like if he had been given the tools to deal with his emotional suffering when he was young, if he’d just had access to the necessary coping strategies, so much could have been different.

  But instead, he fell back on what worked, on what was safest and easiest for him: he refused to deal with any of it. And it made an already miserable situation a hundred times worse. She hadn’t even been aware of how severely it all affected him until the very end.

  Lauren pressed her lips together, looking down as she rolled her pen between her fingers.

  Because she realized then that she was guilty of the same exact thing.

  As much as she denied still caring about everything that happened between them, as much as she insisted to Jenn that it was years ago and that it was all in the past, the truth was, she’d never gotten over it.

  Lauren would have never admitted that if he hadn’t come back into her life, she would have gone about her business, choosing to pretend she was unaffected by her past, and if she’d never seen him again, she probably would have been able to believe her own lie. But his reappearance had given her past a voice again.

  And as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t pretend it didn’t exist anymore.

  Lauren put her pen down, not even attempting to take notes anymore as she thought of her dinner with him the other day. The whole time she sat across from him, she had to focus intently on maintaining her carefully cultivated façade. She could feel how effortless it would have been to fall right back into things with him, how simple it would have been to pretend there were no missed years in between, to pretend that nothing had ever gone wrong between them.

  But she fought to stay guarded, because allowing herself to be vulnerable with him again would have been a very dangerous—and stupid—thing for her to do.

  So she sat across from him, battling her instincts to let him back in, yet refusing to address what was preventing her from doing it in the
first place.

  Lauren sighed and shook her head: here she was, a future psychologist, blatantly guilty of suppression.

  And just like that, it hit her.

  She wasn’t going to avoid it anymore.

  She was doing the very thing that caused him so much additional suffering. She knew it wasn’t healthy for him, so what made her think it would be healthy for her?

  She needed to talk to him. Really talk to him. She knew that now.

  The only thing she didn’t know was why.

  What did she hope to gain from talking it out with him? Did she want the answers Jenn claimed she was entitled to? Did she even need closure after all this time?

  Or did she just want her friend back?

  If it was about friendship, she knew she couldn’t have the latter without the former. They could never truly be friends again without her understanding what had gone wrong between them.

  So if she was going to let him back into her life, then she would need answers. They would have to talk about what happened, regardless of how awkward or unpleasant it would be, so that she could move on and not just pretend that she had.

  Maybe they could both move on.

  A small smile curved Lauren’s lips at the realization that they could potentially rekindle their friendship.

  She missed it.

  She missed him.

  Even when she was pretending she wasn’t hurt, she never pretended not to miss him.

  With newfound determination, Lauren picked up her pen and resumed taking notes off the front board.

  She could just hear Jenn’s reaction to the idea of forming a friendship with Michael Delaney again, and she couldn’t help but smile.

  Because if Jenn considered being an adult and moving on “selective amnesia,” well, then that would be her problem.

  “Lauren Monroe?”

  Lauren looked up from her seat in the waiting room, her brow already furrowed. It wasn’t the voice she’d been expecting.

  “Hi, I’m Dr. Lawrence. I’ll be taking care of you today,” said an older gentleman with a polite smile. He wore light green scrubs, not Adam’s usual dark blue, and his graying hair and little potbelly were the embodiment of what Jenn had pictured when Lauren first told her she had a crush on her chiropractor.