Long Time Gone

Louise wakes to a pounding headache behind her eyes and the smell of strong coffee. The ache spreads through her temples and down the back of her neck before her eyes crack open and she realizes where she is. Home.

The stairs creak under her and so do her knees, she wonders in the back of her mind if this is what getting old feels like. She doesn’t have much time to contemplate it though, because when she reaches the bottom of the stairs and the doorway into the kitchen, her eyes land on Emmy.

She’s standing in fresh scrubs, bright hair braided back the same way as the day before, fixing a cup of coffee to go. Louise contemplates tiptoeing back upstairs until a familiar growl from underneath the kitchen table alerts her sister of her presence.

Emilia spins around, as if she’s forgotten her sister is back, “Where the hell did you go last night?”

Louise thinks being invisible would be better than being alone with her sister for the first time in three years.

She shrugs, padding guiltily past Shasta and towards the old coffee pot, “Out.”

“Obviously,” she rolls her eyes, leaning against the counter, studying her, “You reek of whiskey.”

Louise’s cheeks burn with shame, suddenly all too aware of the tangled mess of hair on top of her head and the smudged remnants of mascara she hadn’t cried off the night before. She was stupid to think she’d be alone. Emmy’s an adult, a real one, with a real grown up job. She hasn’t been pretending like Louise has been for years. Emmy’s the real deal.

“S-sorry-” Louise begins, the word feeling heavier than she intended.

Emilia cuts her off with the shake of her head and a wave of her hand, “Dinner’s at seven,” she reminds her in case she’s forgotten.

And then she’s out the door, cup of coffee in one hand and keys in another. Louise has done everything but forgotten.

*

It takes two cups of coffee and the thought of being alone with her parents to force Louise out the door. Harry had never told her when exactly she was supposed to show up, but she hopes he takes hangovers as terribly as he used to so he won’t be too angry.

She tries her hardest to push the murky glimpses of the night before to the back of her mind as she drives. It comes back in flashes, like most of her memories with Harry do. They’re bright and sharp and crack her chest wide open. The first day of kindergarten when they met, middle school when she taught him how to play guitar, high school when they were so in love nothing else mattered but dreams of Nashville and each other.

He’s sitting on the porch steps when she arrives. She feels his eyes on her every move as she gathers up her things, a bottle of water and an old wide brim hat of her mother’s. He looks every bit as hungover as she feels as she approaches. Her head is spinning with a hundred different things she should and shouldn’t say but none of them make it past her lips because a flash of black and white fur is bounding across the yard to greet her.

“Duke,” she calls fondly, admiring the spring in the old border collie’s step before she realizes the sounds coming out of his mouth aren’t exactly welcoming.

Harry whistles before the dog can reach her and he retreats to his side. Her chest stings with rejection and the familiarity of being forgotten. Her mother had been wrong, Shasta wasn’t just old, every dog in the county had yet to forgive Louise.

“This is Pepper,” Harry introduces with a wave of his hand when Louise reaches them.

Her stomach plummets, she’s been gone too long, “Sh-shit, sorry-”

He shakes his head, “Duke’s daughter. Looks just like her.”

Then he stands up. She’s forgotten in the past eight hours how tall he is, how much bigger he can make himself seem. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t need to, the guilt on her face and in her heart is enough for both of them.

*

The first hour of strawberry picking is a stretched out, awkward silence at best. Sure, there’s the radio Harry brought along but the signal is shitty and every song seems to be something she could’ve written but better.

They fall into a rhythm rather quickly, each taking their own row. It’s a tedious job, one that requires someone who cares enough to check the fields every single day, catching ripe berries just before they rot. She can’t imagine they’ll get it done in time, just the two of them, but she keeps her mouth shut.

They break for lunch under the old oak tree. The shade provides a little relief and Louise considers dumping one of the water bottles she brought along over her head. Instead she bites into her apple and ignores Pepper’s judging eyes.

Harry breaks the silence first, through a mouthful of peanut butter and jelly sandwich, “You write any of these?” the toe of his boot knocks against the speaker of the radio.

She nearly chokes as she swallows her bite of apple, “God, no.”

She wishes. She wishes she could have come back and told him she’d made it, her songs were all over the radio even if she wasn’t the one singing them. She had a record deal and a house and a life for them. But she’d failed. She’d been laughed out of every label and bar in Nashville.

She doesn’t speak again until her apple is gone, “You know you can’t pick all of this field everyday with two people, right? It’s impossible.”

He shrugs, staring at the sandwich in his calloused hands, “You don’t have to come everyday.”

“Th-that wasn’t what I meant-” she shakes her head. She’ll show up everyday if he’ll let her. She can’t let him kill himself trying.

“I have to,” he cuts her off with a shake of his own head, “He planted this whole field. I-it’s just something I have to do.”

She knew that was the answer she was going to get. His mother was diagnosed with lung cancer just months before she’d left, after a ten year cough finally produced blood, a product of a lifetime of smoking. It was the reason he hadn’t run away with her like she’d begged. His father had needed him. This field had needed him. But now, his father was gone too, taken by the same beast that took his mother. All Harry has is their memory and this field.

“B-but you don’t have to do it alone-” she tries, heart aching.

“I just have to, Louise.”

*

By the end of the day, Louise’s muscles ache all the way down to her bones. All she wants is a hot shower and to curl up in her childhood bed, but first she has to face her family again.

She can smell supper before she even reaches the front porch. The windows are open, the radio is on, everyone is home. If she closes her eyes it’s almost as if she never left, as if she’s sixteen and coming home for supper from spending the day with Harry at the lake. Her parents will greet her with a kiss on the cheek, her sister will ramble on with a smile about her day, she’ll doze off on the sofa wrapped around her favorite dog.

She forces herself to walk through the door, knowing how much things have changed, knowing how unwelcome she is.

It looks almost as if nothing has changed. Her mother is at the stove finishing her cooking, her father and sister are at the kitchen table with the newspaper divided between them. It feels like a dream, like maybe she’s invisible and looking in on it all, until she sees the fourth place setting. She breathes a silent sigh of relief.

“Louise!” her mother’s face lights up at her in the kitchen doorway. She looks surprised, as if she’d set the table just hoping it would be enough karma to bring her home for dinner.

“Hi mama,” she smiles weakly.

“You’re just in time,” her eyes shine, the crinkles near them show her smile is genuine, “Go wash up.”

She does as her mother asks, mumbling a timid ‘hello’ to her father and sister as she passes. She’s itching for a shower, to wash away the sweat and dirt of the day, but she settles for some cold water on her face and washing her hands twice.

The tension at the dinner table feels just as thick as the first night she arrived. Louise knows she needs to do something, something more than pushing her potatoes around her plate, she just hasn’t figured it out yet. Shasta’s forgiving act of curling up under her feet beneath the table is just enough to keep her searching for a way to right all of her wrongs.

*

They slip into a routine, something that terrifies Louise. She rises every morning with the sun, drives to Harry’s with a cup of coffee and a brown bag lunch, and they begin in the same corner of the field, searching all day for strawberries that have ripened overnight. They don’t talk much, until lunch, but sometimes she hears him humming along to a song and she has to bite her lip from joining in.

Pepper always joins them for lunch. She warms up to Louise eventually, though not as quickly as Shasta has forgiven her (they’re both encouraged by crusts of bread and ear rubs, though). Sometimes they talk, almost amicably even. Sometimes he asks her about her mother or her sister, sometimes she asks him about old high school classmates. It never runs any deeper than that, they never pick at old wounds. Not for the first week, at least.

It’s a Saturday morning and Louise is so hungover that she still feels drunk. Liam had learned that the only way to get her out of her childhood bedroom was to offer all drinks on him. She shows up at Harry’s anyway, because she knows if she doesn’t, he’ll spend the whole day picking alone.

He’s pulling on his boots on the porch, clearly surprised to see her, but doesn’t argue when she follows him out to the field. Her head is pounding and she wonders how much ibuprofen she could down before it subsides or her stomach explodes. The whole world feels off balance and fuzzy but she gets to work anyway, hoping it wears off before the sun heats up and makes everything worse.

“Why were you at The Bullet last night?” his question catches her so off guard that she nearly loses her balance and steps on a ripe strawberry plant.

She shrugs, catching her balance and squatting down again, “Liam invited me…” she trails off, just the mere act of him speaking to her before lunch is enough to make her almost too nervous to question him, “How’d you know?”

He snorts, “Half the county knows every move you make, Louise.”

Louise knows he’s right so she bites her lip and goes back to picking.

By lunchtime she can feel the sweat beading in the hair at the nape of her neck and she’s certain the sun has fried every layer of her skin. When Harry stands up for lunch, she follows suit, or tries to. All of a sudden the field around her begins to spin and her legs feel like those jello cups Harry’s mother used to give them after school.

“Ouiser?” Harry’s voice sounds distant and she realizes the dark fuzziness that had clouded her vision all day has taken over, “Lo?”

Before she knows it, she’s landed harshly on her ass, Harry knelt in front of her. She thinks if there was anything left in her stomach that she hadn’t thrown up the night before, she could be sick again.

“S-sorry,” she mumbles, blinking harshly in an attempt to regain her vision, “I didn’t mean-”

He shakes his head, arms slipping under hers, “C’mon. Let’s go cool off inside.”

The world spins around her as he leads her back to the house but she isn’t sure if that’s from the hangover or the heat or the fact that he is touching her. Her brain is too clouded to figure it out.

He props her up on the sofa in the living room, telling her not to move. She wants to take the room in, the whole house really, and see what’s changed but all she can do is close her eyes until he returns. When he does, it’s with Tylenol, a glass of sweet tea, and something that smells a lot like peanut butter.

“Here,” he mumbles, plopping down next to her, “Take these first. Then eat this.”

She does as he says, with tiny sips and bites. Harry turns on the old TV in front of them and puts his feet up on the coffee table, old, muddy boots still on his feet.

“Your mother would kill you for that,” Louise mumbles between bites of her sandwich.

He snorts, flipping aimlessly through channels, “She’d kill me for a lot more than this.”

She wants to push, to dig deeper, but instead she takes another bite and watches as he flips through channels. He doesn’t pause long enough to give anything a chance which annoys her to no end. She almost says something before he lands on a rerun marathon of Nashville.

She can’t help but roll her eyes, “Please don’t tell me you watch this crap.”

He snorts and shakes his head, eyes trained on the television, “Thought it’d be something you might like.”

They watch in silence for a few minutes as some dramatic scene in a recording studio plays out in front of them. She half pays attention as she eats slowly. She lets her eyes drift to the walls, family photos his mother had hung up still dotted the walls. Her chest aches every time she thinks about his parents, about him being in this big house all alone.

“Is it really like this?” he stirs her from her thoughts.

Her eyes snapped back to the tv, “God no.”

“Why’d you really leave?” he mumbles, voice quiet, “What happened?”

She wants to ask what he thinks, or what he’s heard (she isn’t sure there’s a difference), but she doesn’t. Her mind races with a million little white lies but only the truth finds its way past her lips.

“I failed,” she states plain and simple, “I ran out of money and got evicted. I pawned my fucking guitar for gas money to get back here.”

He’s quiet which makes her regret even opening her mouth at all. She wonders what he’s thinking, if he’s judging her like everyone else. A few years ago she would have known he would never do such a thing, but her old Harry is long gone and that’s mostly her fault.

“I’ll lend you one of mine,” he says after a few seconds, “Haven’t played in years, been sticking mostly to piano.”

Relief floods her lungs. Maybe Harry isn’t as far gone as she thought.

*

Harry sends Louise home early and she’s sort of grateful. Her head is spinning with a hangover and the taste of sweet tea and all of the words she’s gotten out of Harry in one day.

The house is quiet when she returns, her father’s truck nowhere in sight. She follows the hum of the television and finds Emilia and Shasta stretched out on the old floral sofa.

She hesitates in the doorway for half of a second, familiar anxiety building in her chest, before she trudges over to the other end of the sofa, “Hi.”

Emmy doesn’t turn her head, doesn’t even blink, “Where have you been?”

Louise chews on her bottom lip, her hands find Shasta’s fur and fidget nervously. She contemplates lying but she knows that isn’t how burnt down bridges are rebuilt.

“Harry Styles’.”

She snorts and stands up abruptly, startling Shasta. Her heart stutters in her chest. She knows what’s coming, she can feel it. She told the truth and there’s still going to be a blowup. She’s trying to rebuild her bridges but it feels like all she’s doing is tearing down the last remnants.

“You can’t do this forever,” Louise’s voice comes out more shaky and fragile than she’d wanted it to, “We have to talk eventually.”

Emmy bites her lip and walks out of the room. Louise follows, Shasta at her heels, because if Emmy isn’t going to try, Louise has to.

“Emmy,” she follows her into the kitchen, “Please-”

She spins around, bracing her hands behind her on the kitchen counter as if to hold herself together, “Talk?! I have nothing to say to you, Louise! You don’t get to just waltz back into everyone’s lives and expect them to be willing to make amends!”

Her eyes widen, stomach knotting up with hurt and anger and things she can’t control, “I’m not expecting you to make amends, I’m just asking you to talk about what happened! We’re still sisters, Emilia!”

“Sisters?!” she laughs and it’s so cold and callous and unrecognizable that is sends a shiver down Louise’s spine, “You gave that up Louise! Years ago! You don’t get to-”

“We’ll always be sisters!” Louise doesn’t even recognize her own voice anymore, “No matter how much you hate me you can’t change that! You can’t ignore me forever as if this is all about you-”

“Fuck you!”

Louise isn’t sure what comes first, the words or the slap across her cheek.