What would be going too far is telling him that Peter Biggs saved the wrong child from the water that day.
The wrong child drowned.
The wrong child was saved.
Body rigid, I sat in the driver’s seat of my car, hands gripping the steering wheel, eyes staring into the past, as I fought against the wave of memories threatening to drown me.
Lizzie hit the nail on the head with everything she said – and everything she didn’t say.
The bare bones of it came down to the fact that Bethany died that day when it should have been me.
Lizzie didn’t say anything I didn’t already know.
Wrong.
Wrong.
I was all fucking wrong!
My sister had fallen overboard because of me.
Because I’d been teasing her with a stupid toy laser that I’d snagged that morning from a lucky dip bag.
I could have just let her play with the damn laser. It wasn’t even a good one. Just a cheapy I could have replaced in the pound shop for 50p. I’d made enough money that day. Over two hundred pounds in the cards I’d opened. Cards that had meant so much to me that morning only to mean nothing at all that night. I could have given Beth a turn. I could have bought her a lucky dip bag of her own. But I didn’t.
No, because I decided to show off with Hugh instead.
I didn’t have to shine the red laser at the dolphin chasing the boat, and I did.
Me.
When she fell overboard chasing the stupid red light, protective brotherly instincts caused me to jump straight in after her.
I didn’t think about what I was doing, or the fact that I couldn’t swim.
I didn’t realize the danger I was putting my entire family in.
I just saw my sister go overboard and reacted on instinct.
If I had used my brain and stayed in the boat, then Dad would have been able to pull Bethany to safety without the distraction or exhaustion of trying to save me, too.
Instead, I made the biggest mistake of my life and, in turn, caused the death of not only my baby sister, but my father, too.
It was, by far, the worst day of my life because I knew that I was responsible.
I was responsible for my sister falling overboard.
I was responsible for my father exhausting himself in the water trying to keep two children afloat.
I was the one who slipped out of his arms, causing him to let go of Bethany.
Me.
I missed my dad to the point where it was hard to breathe sometimes, and I often felt like I was still in the water with him. At night, I thought a lot about how his hand felt the last time it had touched mine. His grip. His touch. The cold. The slippery feeling as he let go and I was forced to the surface. That was it. He went under and I went up. It wasn’t fair. He was a better person than I could ever be.
As for Bethany? I tried not to think about her at all. The pain was too severe. When I let her enter my mind, when I unleashed the memories of my beautiful toddler sister to play on loop in my head like some black and white movie from the fifties, the guilt trip that followed left me paralyzed in bed for days.
If I had one wish in life, it would be to go back in time. To have the ability to change the course of that day. To go back and refuse point-blank to get on that fucking boat. To throw away that goddamn lucky dip laser.
To change the past so that I could fix the present and make a future worth remembering.
Since God didn’t grant wishes, and I didn’t have a magic lamp or a blue genie at my disposal, I did the next best thing and forced myself to forget.
To not remember any of it.
Not what happened on the boat that day.
Not what happened afterwards.
None of it.
I channeled every ounce of energy I had into erasing my memories.
If I couldn’t change the past, then at least I could force myself to forget it.
“Gerard!” Claire’s familiar voice called out then, dragging me from my thoughts, and bringing me back to the present with a bang. “Wait up!”
Her voice cut through my senses like a wrecking ball, causing the poisonous fog of my past that had been lapping at my heels to reluctantly retreat.
I didn’t turn to greet her, but I didn’t drive away, either.
I couldn’t.
Instead, I reveled in her presence; like a blazing bolt of sunshine chasing the darkness away.
“It’s not true,” she announced breathlessly when she climbed into the passenger seat a few moments later. “What Liz said back there?” Gulping in several deep breaths, she turned sideways to face me. “Not one word of it is the truth.”
Yeah, it is.
“It doesn’t matter,” I began to say, but she quickly cut me off.
“It does matter.” Her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed from the exertion it had taken to sprint across town from the café. “It matters because you matter, and I know you like to get stuck in your head every now and again but promise me that you believe me when I tell you that she was talking shit back there.”
“What Lizzie says doesn’t hurt me.”
“Well, you’re a stronger person than I am, because it hurts me.”
“It’s all good, Claire-Bear,” I replied, forcing myself to smile while I internally battled to get a handle on my emotions. “I’m okay.” Licking my lips, I reached for the key in the ignition, but my hand was shaking too hard to function. “It’s ah … ” Blowing out a shaky breath, I balled my hand into a fist to steady the tremors before trying again. “It’s all good.” This time, when I turned the key in the ignition, the engine complied by roaring to life. “I’m okay.”
“Gerard.” Her tone was soft, too fucking soft to handle in this moment, and when she covered the hand I had resting on the gearstick, I almost lost it. “It’s okay to not be okay.”
“Well, I am okay,” I repeated, keeping my attention locked on the road ahead, as we pulled into Ballylaggin afternoon traffic. “I’m always okay.”
“I know, Gerard,” she replied sadly, entwining our fingers. “I know.”
Fuck, I didn’t deserve her friendship. She knew what I was about. She’d been there that day, right on the boat, watching as my world imploded around me. She knew as well as everyone else on that boat that I was responsible, and she still held my hand.
“Do you know what I think this day calls for?” Claire asked, finally breaching the silence when we pulled into the driveway of my house a little while later.
“I don’t know, Claire-Bear,” I indulged her by answering. “What does today call for?”
“The couch, a blanket, a big bowl of popcorn—” she paused to grin at me “—and a rerun of Johnny and Baby.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” I shot back with a shake of my head. “Not fucking happening.”
“Oh yes.” Her grin widened and she nodded eagerly. “It’s happening.”
“No, it’s not.” I shook my head just as emphatically. “My brain can’t take another rerun of Dirty Dancing. It’ll explode.”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” she laughed, slapping my arm. “We’ve only watched it a couple of times.”
“Claire,” I growled, unable to mask the outrage in my voice – because her obsession with Johnny Castle was a lot like her obsession with Johnny Depp: unhealthy as hell and getting worse by the day. “I’ve watched that film so many times with you that I can recite the bastard thing word for word.” I shook my head again. “No, I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“As opposed to your obsession with The Shawshank Redemption?” she countered, sounding equally frustrated with my refusal to bend to her will – something we both knew I would end up doing. “If I have to listen to another one of your Morgan Freeman voiceovers I’m going to cry.”
“Claire.” I gaped at her in horror. “You can’t possibly compare those two movies.” Narrowing my eyes, I added, “And I do a wonderful Morgan Freeman impression.”
“Yeah,” she snorted. “Wonderfully bad.”
“Ugh!” I sucked in a sharp breath. “You said you loved it!”
“Yeah, well, I lied,” she cackled, reaching across the console to poke my stomach. “You get a big fat F.”
“F for fantastic?”
“F for bad.”
“Shouldn’t I get a B for bad?”
“Only in your world, Gerard,” she laughed. “Of course, I might be open to improving your grade if you give me what I want.”
“Oh teacher,” I purred, tone playful now that the mood had significantly lightened between us. “Tell me how.”
“An afternoon snuggling on the couch, stuffing our faces.” Batting her big brown eyes up at me, she smiled angelically and added, “With the kittens on our laps, and Johnny and Baby on the flat screen.”
“Jesus.” I shook my head in resignation. “Okay, fine, fine! But this is the last time, Claire.”
“Yay!” she cheered gleefully, clapping her hands together. “See? I knew you’d come around to my way of thinking.”
“Yeah,” I huffed. “Like I have much of a choice.”
“Oh, stop it,” she teased, leaning across the seat to press a kiss to my cheek. “You know you love me.”
Yeah, and I had a feeling the whole world knew it.
“Yeah, so this isn’t going to work for me.” With my hands on my hips, I stared dispassionately at my reflection in the mirror. I’d watched the rom-coms, ate the popcorn, and basically did everything she told me to all evening, but I had to draw the line somewhere, dammit, and I had a feeling dressing me up might be it. “I can pull off many things in life, Claire-Bear, but PVC leather clearly isn’t one of them.”
“Don’t be silly, Gerard,” Claire replied from her perch on her bedroom carpet. With a sewing needle pursed between her lips, she tugged on the waistband of my pants, trying and failing to close the damn button. “You look great.”
“Great? Look at me, babe!” I demanded, gesturing to the horrendous outfit she had somehow managed to sew me into. “I look like the love child of Jon Bon Jovi and the Michelin man!”
“Honestly, Gerard, you look great,” she continued to coax, setting aside her needle and thread so that she could use both hands to wrestle me into my pants. “Super sexy.”
“Yeah, fucking right,” I huffed. “You can see the stem of my cock, Claire!” Eyes bulging, I pointed to the very obvious mishap in her design. “I know you can’t see the full shaft, but you can see my pubes and that’s not supposed to happen, right?”
“No, it’s not supposed to happen,” Claire agreed with a bite to her tone, as she continued to wrestle with the button on my pants. “But I’m trying to fix it, so quit being a baby and suck in your belly, dammit!”
“Do you want me to die?”
“I want you to suck in your waist so I can tie this bloody button!”
Releasing a furious growl, I begrudgingly obliged and sucked in my breath. Again.
“Dammit, it won’t close,” she cried out in frustration.
“I know,” I shouted back. “Because I have a cock and balls that you clearly didn’t plan for when you designed these cock-less-Ken-pants!”
“Ew, Gerard, don’t use the word cock.”
“Is dick better?”
“Ew no, that’s our son’s name. Say willy.”
“Fine,” I snapped, glaring down at her. “Willy.”
“Ahhh!” Releasing a high-pitched scream, Claire climbed to her feet and stamped her foot. “It’s pointless.” Pressing a hand to her forehead, she stalked over to her bed and faceplanted the mattress in dramatic fashion. “I failed.”
“No, no, you didn’t,” I grumbled, as I penguin-walked my ass over to the bed to comfort her. “It’s my dick’s fault.”
“Willy.”
“Willy,” I corrected, sinking down on the bed next to her. The loud tearing sound followed by a sudden gust of cold air that hit my bollocks assured me that sitting down in cheap PVC leather was a terrible decision. “Ah crap. I think we have a code blue balls, Claire-Bear.”
“Just forget it,” Claire wailed into her duvet. “Take them off and burn them. We don’t need to dress up this year.”
“You know, I could just wear regular black pants,” I offered. “Like he does in the movie.” Rolling onto my side, I traced the curve of her spine with my finger. “Come on. Don’t be sad.”
“Yeah, but I’ve been working so hard on these costumes.”
“I know,” I coaxed, settling her hair over one shoulder, revealing one perfectly shaped ear with three tiny stud piercings on the lobe. “Come on, Claire-Bear. Look at me.”
“I just wanted it to be perfect.” Sniffling, Claire peeked up from her face-down position. “That’s all.”
“I’ll figure it out,” I heard myself say, needing to make it better for her. “I’ll bring the pants over to Mammy K and she’ll work her magic on them.”
“Really?” Big brown eyes full of unshed tears greeted me. “You’d do that for me?”
“Of course.” Using my thumb, I wiped a rogue tear from her cheek. “I’d do anything for you.”
“Thanks.” Snatching my hand up in both of hers, she closed her eyes and leaned into my touch. “Bestie.”
“Anytime.” I could feel my heart accelerate to a thousand beats a minute, because while I might be cradling her face in my hand, she was holding my life in hers. “Bestie.”
