Worth the Trouble ✓

27 | absolution

I'VE STARTED WALKING TO HAYWOOD Park after school.

The weather is frigid but not freezing, the lake a navy void under cloud cover, so I can tolerate the cold long enough to wander twice around its pathways. Stopping at the end of the jetty, the thoughts catch up to me.

I keep thinking that this feeling has to lighten up, eventually. That my heart attached to the back of a vehicle and dragged along burning gravel can only hold out so long before it simply stops, not one mass but a sprinkling of red dust stretching for miles behind.

When my manager sent out a staff email asking for availability for the next month, I realised I didn't have to work the intense hours I had been when Suki was still in Carsonville. I replied that I was only available on the weekends, and hit send before any of the implications set in. Then it set in.

How much free time I have now.

I could stop madly studying through the night and finally, get a full night's sleep.

I could do whatever I liked after school—play computer games, or hang out with my non-existent friends—with no reason to get home unless Dad was drunk again.

The relief was a singular raindrop on my forehead, and the guilt was the following lighting strike. How could I find any silver lining in this situation? I don't want there to be upsides, because it makes it seem like Suki leaving was a good thing. Suki's the love of my life. Why would Suki leaving improve anything in my life? I wanted to work hard for her and Cassie.

I wanted to prove that I could do it.

That the scared twelve-year-old boy inside shied away from being a father was my greatest weakness. Even if I had done everything right on the surface. Supported her, got a job, made her all the promises a good boyfriend had to make. I couldn't lie to myself.

There was a part of me that felt like I'd dodged a bullet, and no matter how minuscule it was, its mere existence made me feel inadequate.

I love Suki. I love her. I want her here.

But she can't be here.

The wind picks up, horizontal. It drags the surface of the lake into tight ripples, all moving left, and something in me snaps. I feel a rush of anger, though I'm not sure for whom. Suki, for leaving me? Her parents for making her? Is it me for idiotically falling absolutely in love with her? Is it the universe, or some sick deity toying with our lives?

I have never been religious—never saw the appeal—until I want someone to blame. Now I understand it much better. I want to be absolved of this feeling.

I tug the silver band from my ring finger. It catches on the knuckle, so I twist harder, and ignore the red mark it leaves. My vision swims and blurs as silent tears start to fall. All I know is that it burns to hold this piece of metal, the broken promises, vows now never to be made, too many memories. The little wind-swept waves of Haywood Lake shatter into concentric circles when I fling the ring out over the water, far beyond the reaches of the jetty.

I hear a light plop—the raindrop—and then regret slams into me—the lightning.

Why did I do that?

I'm not ready to let go of her yet.

Blind instinct drives me to strip out of my parka, sweater, shirt, and shoes. Swing my body over the wooden railing around the jetty. Dive into the water. It shocks me on contact. The cold is immobilising, seizing my muscles and limbs the way a live wire would.

Breaking above the surface, I gulp in lungfuls of stinging air, paddling my way out to the place I saw the ring last. I gauge the vicinity, I sink under the water, I let all the air out of my lungs. Kicking with my legs and dragging my arms in powerful, desperate arcs, I swim down, down, down.