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Chapter 21
Hours. That’s how long Cornell sat on the floor after Ali walked out the door sitting in a puddle of something deeper and darker than even when his mother died in a hospital alone while he was playing football in college.
The pain was stinging, constant. Ali’s words and the way they left her mouth—angry and scared, but clear and true—were continuously electrocuting him. And even though she had left, he couldn’t find the switch.
“Stop… ”
“Don’t… ”
“Stop… ”
“Don’t put your hands on me—your fingers inside of me—when I say no.”
Cornell pressed his palms into his eyes, yearning to stop the instant replay. He didn’t know anymore what Ali had meant by tried. Graham did. It was all a game of semantics that Ali clearly didn’t want to play. But at the end—the painful, heartbreaking end—Graham had raped her.
And she needed me.
Cornell rushed off the floor and into the bathroom, heaving painfully into the toilet. But it would never—could never—be painful enough to trump what he felt as Ali sobbed out his voicemail. The guilt could eat him alive. The pain could drive him into a grave, and none of it could possibly compare to what and how she felt that night.
You deserve it, Cornell told himself as he sat on the bathroom floor, leaning his head against the cabinet beneath the sink. He didn’t even know how Ali could look at him, let alone hug him, kiss him, want to touch him. His mind raced thinking about each and every possible way it could have turned out differently.
Giving Evan an ultimatum, telling him he would quit if Graham was recruited to Hopperville.
Telling his father he couldn’t go to the Cowboys’ game. And further, never reconciling with him in the first place to eliminate any possibility he wouldn’t have been home that night. Then he would have been home with Ali, puttering around while she made dinner, laying on the couch wrapped up in her warmth, taking in her smile, her laugh.
I haven’t even heard that laugh in over a month.
There had been giggles, chuckles. But no nose-wrinkle, air stuck in the back of Ali’s throat before it turned into a full-blown belly laugh where she couldn’t catch her breath. How could there be? Cornell wondered, understanding that Ali had been living in perpetual darkness since the moment his phone died on that fateful night. His chest ached because even if Ali let him, he had no idea how to light up the world around her.
Cornell’s phone rang from his pocket, and he grabbed it quickly, hoping it was her, wishing to hear her voice in a different tone than what she had last used.
Instead, it was his father. Cornell contemplated ignoring the call. But as he sat on the cold floor of the small guest bathroom with his legs bunched up against his chest, Cornell realized what he wanted less than talking to his father was to be alone.
“Hey.”
“You sound awful,” Peter said over the phone.
Cornell cleared his throat. “Um, yeah, stomach bug.”
“I wanted to check in, to see… you don’t sound sick, Cornell. You sound… ”
Devastated? Disgusted? Guilty? I’m dying inside.
“Upset.”
“No,” he feigned a cough. “Bad bug. We both have it.” It’s called heartbreak.
Peter sighed heavily. “How’s Ali?”
“Sick in bed,” Cornell lied.
“Cornell—”
“Dad, honestly—”
“Alright, alright,” Peter interrupted. “I’m just watching the weather. You might get a freeze tonight.”
He called to talk about the fucking weather?
