Fight for You

They say that sadness comes in shades of blues and grays, but that can’t be true. If they think that sadness comes in only two variations of colors, then they’ve never known true sadness. Sadness was the bright green of his eyes, and all the shades they were depending on the light or the darkness of my room. It was the black cotton of his shirt when he would slowly pull it off and lay it to the ground. It was the pale peach of his skin, glowing under the moonlight. It was the russet freckles on his chest that I could connect by tracing my fingers to. It was the white of his smile. It was the explosion of color that clouded my eyesight every time he touched me.

What sadness really is is my total recall of every single color he ever touched me with. Or maybe the true color of sadness is the dried blood staining the white of my shirt on the floor. No amount of bleach or detergent will ever take the depth of that blood from my cotton. Even after it’s been cleaned and scrubbed so that no traces of evidence linger, it will still be there. I stare at it so often that I memorized the shape of it.

The crash downstairs is what breaks me of my trance, causing me to blink and shake my head. I don’t know how long I’ve been staring at the stain. I don’t know how long I’ve been thinking about colors and how the meanings behind them all have been misconstrued. I only know that I was sitting on the bed with my arms around my knees and the sun was warm on my back and my eyes were locked on the shirt. Now, it’s dark and I can barely make out the stain from the rest of the fabric.

I blink again and call out with a groggy, unused voice, “Mom?”

“Fuck it! We’re just going to have sandwiches instead.” She grumbles and throws whatever was in the oven into the sink with a loud crash.

I wipe my wet cheeks without even realizing that they’re wet and trudge downstairs, my hands in the long cotton sleeves of his black shirt. I realize then that I still haven’t showered. I’m still in the black shirt and the green sweatpants that I was in three days ago, where my mother changed me like a small child. It’s hard to believe that it’s been three days. That’s seventy-two hours that I still hadn’t slept through.

I don’t realize I look so much like shit as I really do until I see the look on my mother’s face, her eyebrows pulling in and her nose cringing up slightly. It almost makes me feel guilty for not being okay and happy again. It almost makes me feel like she’s disappointed in the fact that I couldn’t just push through and live for myself.

But living for myself seems so hard, so unnecessary, like such a chore. Admittedly, I was afraid to change my clothes, to wash his shirt, to scrub away his scent. It was the last thing that I had of him. If I lost it, how would I ever get it back? How would I remember the piney musk that he wreaked of? How would I remember that he tried to hide it with a layer of tangy aerosol that did nothing but add to it? How would I remember that his deodorant smelled like Irish scent and that his breath was always minty and tinged with tobacco? How would I remember any of these things if I potentially lost the smell to the washing machine?

I can’t lose his scent.

I watch my mother make a sandwich for herself and wrap it in a napkin before making me one and kissing me on the head. “Eat this one, please, Ember.”

Her words hit me, make me cringe my eyes closed, and nod. “I’ll try.”

“Just, please. Please eat it.”

I nod and watch her leave quickly. My mother was nurse on the night shift. She left every night at seven and came home every morning at eight. When I see the headlights pull over the ceiling and I hear the car moving up the road, I slump and pick at the bread.

I force myself to eat. I know you’re not supposed to, but if I didn’t force myself, I wouldn’t be eating anything at all. The way she said ‘please’ seemed to break my heart even more. I stare at the beige walls, the beige couches, and the beige lamp shade. In between the limbo of beige, cranberry and cherry wood are placed artfully. None of these colors make me feel warm, welcome, at home. None of these colors are the ones that remind me of sadness. I find it abundantly pathetic that the only solaces I have are in the colors sadness represents. All the greens and pale flesh tones and russet browns and blacks that bring Rixon back to life are the only colors that bring any kind of warmth back to my body.

After eating half the sandwich, I crumple the rest in a napkin and I tuck it into the garbage. The house is cold, drafty, and empty. Wrapping my arms around myself, I try to warm the bone-chilling coldness and stand awkwardly in the front room. I look at the beige sofas, the cranberry recliner, trying to talk myself to stay in the living room, to turn on the TV, and watch mind-numbing television instead of going to my bedroom. I try to remind myself that it would be better to stay down here and watch some stupid show than it would be to go upstairs and stare at my clothes spattered with his blood. Anything would be better than to go back to my room and watch the car crash over and over again in my head.

I propel myself to grab the remote, to grip it in vice, and turn it on. I settle on a DVD because I don’t think my mind can handle commercial breaks, and I sink into the maroon recliner. Though, just as I’m getting comfortable and ready to succumb to this movie, to let it make me feel like this is a normal night in, the doorbell sounds.

I bite my lip and push myself from the chair, wandering to the front door after I turn on the porch light and the light above me. I can see the shapes of two men, both tall and broad. I know that no one is supposed to be coming over, whether for myself or my mother. I doubt she knows two tall, broad shouldered men. I do, though, and they would have told me if they were coming over. Then again, maybe they wouldn’t.

I pull the door open to reveal the men to be officers and even though I look sad and composed of heartbreak, inside, I’m panicking more than I should be to see them. Rixon’s voice echoes through my mind then, his voice rasping and gruff. “Cops can’t get involved, Em. All that does is cause us trouble.”

Out of the two, I instantly recognize Officer Parker. I know his twins, Jackson and Jeremy. They were a part in the club that Rixon was in. I cringe, thinking about how Jackson’s face was the first one I saw after the car crash happened. He was the one who pulled me from the wreckage; Jeremy dragged Rixon from the car afterwards. I look the other officer up and down, trying to pick out a detail that could help me place him. He seems familiar, but there was no detail that I could place. His tag reads Rivers.

“Miss Hart?” Officer Rivers asks, pressing his hand against the doorjamb.

I stare at him before flicking my eyes to Officer Parker. “Ember,” he says softly and presses his hand against the door, “We have some questions. Can we come in?”

I lick my lips and look down, nodding. “Yeah, yeah, you can.”

As they move forward, I scuffle back and let them close the door. I lead them into the living room and sit down on my chair, watching as they find places to sit comfortably, like we’re friends gathering around to watch the movie together. They look calm, comfortable as they look around my home and settle on details.

“About to watch a movie?” Officer Rivers asks conversationally. My brows furrow.

“Questions about what?”

“About what happened Friday night, Ember.” Officer Parker says, turning his back to the television so that I focus on him. “We want your side of the story.”

“What does my side have to do with anything?” I say petulantly, stubbornly. I never had to answer to the police. Rixon always handled it with assured tones and positive body language. Now, here were the cops, Rixon’s dead, and I don’t know how to handle their questioning.

Officer Parker rubs the back of his neck and offers his hand in a rolling motion. “We need to know what happened that night.”

“And we’d ask Mr. Knight, but he’s…” Officer Rivers trails his voice off like it’s not supposed to hit me in the same way as if he would have said he was dead.

“Dead.” I growl. “He’s dead. I don’t need it to be sugarcoated and treaded like the word is illegal. I was there. I watched him die. It was tragic and horrible and I’m a fucking wreck over it. But it was a car crash. I didn’t see the car that hit us. I didn’t see the license plate, I didn’t see anything. I don’t have the answers you’re looking for.”

“See, I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that for one second. I think there’s more to all of this.” Officer Rivers says, shaking his finger at me like he’s caught me in some web and my wings are sticking. “I know there’s more, so you should save yourself the trouble and start talking.”

“There really is nothing more to this, sir.” I’ll bite out. “We were driving back to my house and our car got rammed into the tree.”

“Did it?” He says sarcastically, laughing humorously about it. “Then how did the car begin to wrap around the tree? Did a semi smash you and drive off? The condition your Camry was in at the body shop, that thing must have been rammed repeatedly.”

I’ll stare at him, tears threatening to fall over. This was it. We were caught. How do I worm my way out of this without you? You always had a silver tongue. You could bullshit yourself out of any situation. You were the words, the strength, the glamour. How do I get out of this without you? The tears start to rain down my cheeks, burning like acid. I feel like I could see the smoke come up where it burned. We’re caught. All of this, everything you carried on, it’s going to be busted by the cops. I press my hands to my face and sob.

“Stop it. Just fucking stop it.” Officer Parker barks at him, crouching down and rubbing my back. “Shh, it’s okay, Ember. It’s okay.”

“What are you doing?” the other asks in something close to outrage.

He shakes his head and rubs my back slowly, soothingly. “She doesn’t know anything, Dan. She doesn’t know whatever it is you’re trying to gouge out of her. Look at her, would’ya? She’s hurting more than any of us know. She just watched her boyfriend die. What could she possibly know?”

I don’t chance a glance at him to see if he’s scrutinizing me. I don’t chance it because if he is, and he thinks he sees more to it, then how do I justify myself? But I do feel his eyes, they’re combing over my messy hair and my dirty clothes. I almost feel stripped by his stare, like he’s seeing all the lies I have under my skin, all the blood I’ve seen, all the murder that’s happened in these parts by boys too young to know what the death of a man’s eyes looks like, let alone to be the one to put that look on his face.

“There’s nothing to gain from this.” Parker says to him, giving him such a look that says that their work here is done.

Officer Parker stands up straight and touches the back of my head. “I’m sorry we intruded. We won’t be bothering you any time soon with this petty shit.”

Officer Rivers moves towards me and shakes my hand briskly and nods once. “Unless we find anything else to question you about with this situation.”

“I understand.” I nod as I walk them out to the door. “If you do have any questions, you know where to find me.”

“Trust me,” Rivers scoffs, “If there’s anything to ask, you’ll be the first to know.”

I know I didn’t sway him with my tears. They weren’t crocodile, but they were as close to it as I could get. If the death wasn’t so fresh, I would have faked those tears until I couldn’t breathe. Rivers nods to me and walks down the stairs of my porch and disappears in the rainy night.
I look up at Officer Parker and he wipes the tears from my cheeks. “You did good, kiddo. That’ll hold him off from the trail for a few days. What you need to do now is call Spencer and clue him in on what’s happened tonight.”

I nod slowly and smile for the first time in three days, and wipe my nose. “Sure. I can do that, Jim.”

He touches my cheek and smiles before nodding and wiping the emotion off his face and closes the door behind me. The tears come again unbidden as I trudge up the stairs to grab my phone. I haven’t talked to any of the members of the Blue Demons in almost three whole days. Facing them seems like a chapter I’m not yet ready to read, but I know I have to do what’s best for the club.

I just hope that Jim is as good of a liar as he is an actor.