Free Don't Explain by Audrey Dacey

don’t think I could have realized that without you. Without
remembering the kind of connection two people could have not just in bed, but
out of it as well. I wish I could say I was happy with her, but I was more just
content that I found someone to share my bed nightly. Someone to come home to.
    “It’s scarier to realize that I was in that type of relationship. So,
really I should thank you because you’re one hell of a friend and the best
rebound a guy could have. Because I don’t know how long I would have been
miserable only hoping for something that I didn’t really want.”
    “Turn right at the light.” Caitlyn was strangely stoic. In all the years
that he knew her, she was never stoic.
    “Caitlyn?”
    “Yeah.”
    “You okay?” He prepared for tears. He didn’t like them, but he could deal
with them if he had to.
    “At least you know where we stand.”
    The rest of the car ride was silent with the exception of directions. Michael
didn’t want to hurt her. He was trying to compliment her, thank her, but it
obviously didn’t take. He wasn’t sure how it was possible for him to completely
screw up this friendship at least once a day since he got there. He was just
trying to be as honest with her as she was with him.
    #
    Michael parked the car on the street in front of Caitlyn’s mother’s
house. Caitlyn examined the property: the lawn was overgrown again and the
house needed to be painted. Caitlyn didn’t care what her mother said. She was
firing the middle schooler from down the street that her mother paid ten bucks
a week to mow her lawn and was hiring a proper landscaper.
    Caitlyn got out of the car and shuffled to the front door. Her ankle
still ached, and she wished she brought a bottle of aspirin with her. She
doubted her mother would have anything that hadn’t expired four years ago.
    Michael came up behind her and offered a hand, but she refused. She was angry
with him. Though she wasn’t sure why. The truth was she was angrier with
herself for letting him use her as a rebound, and as hard as she tried, she
couldn’t help but be drawn in by him. He was intoxicating, and she wanted more
despite the consequences that waited for her at the end of this “friends-who-occasionally-make-out-and-have-sex”-ship.
    Caitlyn walked into her mother’s house and was assaulted by a cloud of
smoke. “Ma!” She moved down the hallway and toward the den, which is where her
mother almost certainly was. “Ma! You home?”
    “Caitlyn?” Her mother appeared in the door frame of the den. She wore a
house dress, and her hair was rolled into a bun at the top of her head. Caitlyn
tried to remember what her mother looked like ten years ago, but it was hard to
fathom the beautiful woman that her mother once was behind the raspy voice,
wrinkles, and weight she had acquired since Caitlyn’s father died.
    A heart attack in the middle of the night was the end of her father. It
was unexpected. Her father was a swimmer and ate well. He seemed to be doing
everything right, but it didn’t keep his heart from going out and his wife from
waking up next to a corpse.
    It changed Catherine Murphy forever. She stopped going out, started
smoking again after almost 30 years, and ate junk food. Caitlyn wondered if she
was trying to speed up her death.
    “Who’s with you? I’m not dressed for company.” Her eyes narrowed on
Michael.
    “Ma, this is Michael Fitzgerald. I went to college with him. You met him
once, remember?”
    “It’s good to see you again, Mrs. Murphy,” Michael said.
    “You cut your hair. Much doctorlier than the shag you had in college. You
were able to come out here with your busy schedule?”
    “I needed a break.”
    “Sometimes trips aren’t about us.” Caitlyn’s mother was good at holding a
grudge.
    Caitlyn turned to Michael with her eyes wide and mouthed “sorry,” but
Michael was smiling back at her mother.
    “I would have come with Murph—Caitlyn—for the funeral, but I couldn’t