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I FOLLOWED HOLDEN INTO the garage. It still stunk of motor oil. He pulled down the ladder to his old room and we climbed up. The place was covered in a layer of dust so thick that it made me cough.
It took Holden a while to climb up and I remembered the punches to his stomach. I wished I could take them back.
Holden turned on the light switch and it flickered into life. Just a pale glow, as though all the strength had drained out of it. I was surprised it still worked after all this time.
The posters on the wall had become so sun-bleached that they were almost white. The ashtray beside the bed was filled with yellowed cigarette butts.
He reached toward me. I stood still, not wanting to flinch from his touch but not wanting to encourage him either. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes.
"Want one?" he asked.
I took it from him. I'd not smoked since I'd been home, not wanting the nagging from Mum. He lit it for me, his fingers hovering close to mine and our faces almost touching in the yellow light.
"I thought you'd given up?" I hadn't seen Holden smoke a cigarette since he'd come back into my life.
"Yeah, it's not good for my voice but who cares? One night won't hurt." He sat down on the bed and took a swig from the bottle, then lit up his own cigarette, dragging deeply.
I stood in the middle of the room, wondering why we were there. He offered me the bottle.
"No, I have to drive back."
He nodded and took another swig. "Thanks for coming out here with me, Carls. I wanted to do it and didn't think I could handle it on my own. I'll probably never come back here. Not to this room, not to this town."
The light flickered again and I held my breath, waiting for the globe to blow. It didn't.
"That's what friends are for. Even screwed up friends. Who else are you going to call on for something like this?"
He grinned, knowing it was true.
"We went wrong, Carlie, we went really wrong. All I ever wanted was for things to stay simple between us. I had a dream to chase and I put that before you. Do you have any idea how much that kills me? Every single day."
I sat down beside him. "It kills me too, Holden. We were so young."
Then nothing, just the gulp of whiskey going down his throat.
I put my arm around him. I wasn't sure what he was trying to say but he was having a hard time saying it.
"No matter what I do, how high I climb, I can't win. You said to stop running but how can I do that? If I stop fighting, I have to admit that I'm just like them. I'm no good. I've never been any good. The only time I was anything more was when you were with me."
Holy fuck, what did I say to that?
He slumped over, his head in his hands. The night was so quiet, you could hear the noise of the King family from across the valley.
"What I did, it was wrong. I knew it was wrong at the time. I don't know why I did it. I never cared about anyone but you. I wanted you, only you. But it was too much for me. I'd been treated like shit all my life. No one in this town would ever give me the time of day. I was low-class scum. You were the only one who ever treated me like a human being."
He stopped to stare at the wall opposite. The old stereo still sat there. Too old for anyone to even bother about taking. He got up and turned it on. The old Johnny Cash CD played.
"When we got to the city, I thought you were pushing me away.” He pushed his fingers through his hair. “You seemed to hate me. I didn't know what to do. And then there were all these women. Women who'd have never looked at me before. They threw themselves at me. I can see now why you'd get angry."
“I never hated you. I hated myself.” There, I’d said it. The words were out and my stomach sunk as though the world would end by me saying them, but the world doesn’t end that easily. The building didn’t even collapse, it just creaked a little in the wind.
“It was only the once.” His voice cracked as he said it.
I wanted to argue but I knew it was the truth as soon as he said it.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“I’m sorry too.”
He took another swig then put the bottle down and gave a dry crackling laugh.
"He wasn't much of a dad to me but I had to be here. I don't even know why. I can't escape them, can I?"
"You're not like them," I said. "They've never shown a bit of remorse for anything they've done."
"The old man did. At the end. I found out this arvo. I went over there, to Jacko's farm. You told me I had to stop running and I did. I went there to face them all. I didn't know how they'd react to me and — this is bloody stupid — but I wondered if I'd demonized them in my mind. That they weren't as bad as I'd made them out to be."
He shook as he said it. I wanted to hold him tight but I wasn't sure if I should.
"They were even worse than I remembered. All of them, sitting around the fire, drunk and fighting. Only a few of them talked to me and that was to hit me up for money. I wondered how much of the booze they were drinking was stolen. A couple of kids were screaming for their dinner but no one paid them any mind. Mum was with some other bloke and Dad's not even in the ground yet.”
“Was Tommy there?”
He shook his head. “He’s got a job driving trucks. Had enough sense to leave town. Then I found out what happened. Old Aunty Mary told me. She was the only one sober enough to talk sense. Uncle Jacko was at it again, with some young girl. Seems Dad caught him at it and pulled him off her. Told her to run home. Jacko didn't take kindly to that and a fight broke out. They were at each other for weeks over it, then one day Jacko came over, drunk off his head, of course. He had a gun.”
Holden stared at the wall. I couldn’t push him to continue. He needed to find the words.
“They were both struggling with it and it went off. Jacko says he just intended on giving dad a scare but who knows? The cops turned up to arrest Jacko while I was there. Shit, Carlie, it was the one decent thing he did in his life. Even when people around here attacked me, what could I say? It's not like I had a family I was proud of. King by name, trash by nature."
I rubbed his back. This pain would never leave him but maybe, if he let it out, it'd lessen.
"I've got to go to the funeral. It's the only thing I can do. It'll get out. The local press will be all over this now it's been classed as murder. And, after that, some local is going to mouth off and bring my name into it."
"People can't blame you."
"You know they will. Maybe they're right. I've been doing a lot of thinking. No matter how far away I get from them, they are still part of me. I can't escape it. There's bad in the lot of them and there's bad in me."
"No, there isn't." He had to see that he was nothing like them.
"Hell, Carlie, I have to face up to it. I can't fight it unless I admit it first. I'm no saint. If you hadn't come along and believed in me, I might be over there tonight, getting drunk... drunker and fighting. I want to be a better person. Not by fame or money but a better person in my heart."
“Ha, you’re a better person than me. I’m still the one fighting. God, if I was a man, I’d be up on domestic violence charges.”
I put my head on his shoulder. I'd never seen Holden vulnerable like this before. I’d been so wrapped up in my pain that I’d not noticed his.
"Will you come to the funeral with me?" he asked.
"Of course."
"Don't answer too lightly. There'll be photographers there, the whole shit storm."
"We've been through shit storms before." I took his hand in mine and traced my thumb along the side of his hand.
"I was wrong to ask you to have me back," he said. "I know that now. I was only thinking of myself, not the pain I’d caused you."
"I was wrong too," I said, my voice barely more than a whisper. "I went crazy. I thought the whole world was going to fall apart and I pushed you until it did."
Holden tried to grin at me, a wonky, uneven grin. He looked so frail that I was scared.
"We were so fucked up back then."
"We had good times too. The best times." I got up and walked around the room.
My stomach knotted up like I was about to dive off a cliff, the feeling so intense and scary, I wasn't sure if I could live through it. Holden couldn't give me back my trust and there were no words he could say to fix the past but I realized something. I couldn't wait for trust to appear from the sky. The trust fairy wasn’t going to appear and sprinkle me with magic dust. I’d die waiting for that. It wasn't something that would ever grow back unless I gave him a chance.
"I'm going to stop running," I said. "I don't know if this will work between us but I'm willing to give it a chance."
He looked up at me. "Are you sure, Carlie? Are you sure I'm worth it?"
I nodded. "It won't be easy, I know that. We both have a lot of fighting to do. Not with each other but with ourselves."
"I know."
We both laid back on the bed, smoking another cigarette and listening to music like the last few years had melted away.