“Okay.” I cross my arms over my chest, tipping my head back to contemplate the stars in the darkening sky. “I was like, twelve years old.”
“Is this gonna count?” She drops a skeptical look on me. “That’s pretty young for regrets.”
“Not where I come from,” I say softly. I unfocus my eyes, looking back through the years until I find that day on the playground. “This cop stopped me and my cousin Jade.”
“For what?”
“For . . .nothing.” I shrug. “It isn’t like what you’re used to. They didn’t need a reason. And this was in the nineties, so drugs were huge in our neighborhood. And kids our age were slinging on the play- grounds. So, we didn’t think anything of it.”
“What happened?”
“He searched me, and of course, found nothing. I was a good kid.” A staccato laugh comes quick and short. “I watched movies, went to school, and wrote poetry. Not exactly a gangbanger in the making. My mom made sure I kept my head down and kept moving. You didn’t have to find trouble in my neighborhood. It found you.”
I glance over my shoulder at the ground, which is so far away the people below like a colony of ants, and turn back.
“Then the same cop searches my cousin.” I pause and swallow the heat blistering my throat. “He . . .she had on this dress, and he . . .touched her.”
I’ll never forget Jade’s indrawn breath. He’d told me to stay against the wall, to face the wall, but when I heard her gasp, I looked at them. I wasn’t a rule breaker, but I knew this one time, I should break the rule. I should step in when I saw his hand working under her dress, when I saw one tear slide down her face. He had a gun. He was a cop. I didn’t know what to do. Jade just shook her head at me, thinking the same thoughts and holding the same fears. It was only a few moments, but that was all it took to turn the whole world upside down.
“I don’t know why we never talked about it,” I say to Bristol. “And we never told anyone. Jade didn’t want to. She was ashamed, I think. I know I was.”
“You were kids and he was in authority.” There’s a world of emotion in Bristol’s eyes when they bore into mine. “That’s awful.”
I blink away the tears filling my eyes as that day suffocates me again.
“And some days, I look in the mirror, like just brushing my teeth or whatever, and I’ll say it out loud. I’ll say ‘Don’t touch her.’ Just like that. Just that, and maybe he would have stopped.”
But there’s no rewind button. There are no do-overs. There’s no delete key that undoes the damage or the guilt or the shame. I’m sorry, but I can’t make it un-happen, and that’s why it’s called regret.
“Things just kind of changed after that, between me and Jade, I mean,” I say. “I mean, we still talk, but . . .”
I shrug, giving up on words to articulate my complex relationship with the cousin I still love so much.
“We all make mistakes and do things we wish we could do differently,” Bristol says softly, drawing my attention to her pretty face in the carnival light. “That’s part of life. You and Jade should talk about it someday. Tell her you’re sorry it happened, and that given the chance, you would have done things differently. We only get one life, but it’s filled with second chances. That’s why I came here to try again with Rhyson.”
I don’t reply, but we smile, and I want to tell her that I’ve never spoken about this before. I want to tell her how good it felt and that I could talk to her all day. That this wheel could be stuck up in the sky for hours, and I wouldn’t get tired of hearing her talk or watching her listen.
I look over the side of the car again, wishing I could hurl this shame and hurt down to the ground but knowing I’ll live with it forever. Even though it has faded through the years, it isn’t gone. It won’t ever go away completely, but at least today, for the first time, I shared this load.
And it feels lighter.
12
BRISTOL
I SHOULDN’T HAVE ASKED that question. “I’m sorry.”
I whisper it, but Grip hears. He’s looking over the side, maybe composing himself. There were tears in his eyes when he talked about his cousin Jade, and that dark, dirty day. When he looks back to me, his eyes are clear of tears but they are still shaded with emotion.
“Sorry for what?”
“For asking you …” I lift one shoulder, hoping it conveys things I can’t put into words. “I’m nosy. It gets me in trouble. I ask too many questions, and then I—”
“I like it,” he cuts in softly.
My breath swirls around in my chest and furiously circles my heart like a cyclone.
“You . . .you like what?” I ask.