Opposites Attract

[TW: Mention of domestic abuse]

      Eliza and Elijah Johnson could not be any more different, starting with their opposite genders, down to their reflections and their style.

           Eliza Johnson was from a dirt poor family, with a mass of unruly fire-red curls and freckles splattered across her face, as if god had tripped while painting and the splatter marred her features forever. As a child, she’d been pudgy, and the boys’ teasing made her mean. Those same boys came to regret it when she turned sixteen, and that baby fat turned to soft, delectable curves.

           The only boy that seemed immune to her wild and mean-spirited charms was Elijah Johnson.

           Though their names might be similar, they looked absolutely nothing alike. Elijah’s dark ochre skin contrasted sharply against her florescent light paleness. His hair might be curlier than hers, but ever since childhood, he kept it in neat cornrows. ‘More convenient that way,’ he’d always said. His mother was a ‘fancy designer lady’ as Eliza called her, and his family was much more affluent than hers, meaning he was always dressed sharply in clean new clothes.

           The two had met in kindergarten when the teacher called their names and asked if they were related. Eliza and Elijah had maintained that they were for the rest of the year to spite her. It wasn’t their fault she hadn’t identified them before roll call.

           The two got along like a wildfire, and had ever since they were children. When Eliza got in trouble with a boy for telling every girl and school how small his ‘thing’ was, despite never having actually seen it, Elijah jumped on damage control. When Elijah got in trouble with the teachers for simply looking like he should be in trouble, Eliza was all too happy to be his alibi.

           More than half the school had bet that the two would marry one day, or at least date, but they’d set it in their own minds that ‘Ew, gross. That’s my brother/sister!’

           So everyone was equally surprised when in college (of course, they attended the same one) Eliza met a man and married him within the year. Good Ol’ Tommy didn’t like Elijah one bit, and while Eliza had told him exactly where he could shove his opinion about it, Elijah supposed arguing about it had proved a waste of time and effort.

           Their friendship wasted away like a flower without water, receiving just enough morning dew to keep it alive by the most technical of definitions, but not nearly enough to thrive.

           Until March 2^nd, 2023.

           Elijah was working late at his mother’s company, a high-paying job that had far more to do with numbers than fashion. With no one to go home to after his fiancé had cleaned out their apartment and took the dog, he’d been doing that a lot lately. When the phone rang he reached for the business line, only to be surprised to hear line beeps instead of a voice. He pulled his cellphone out of his pocket and answered his personal line.

           “‘lijah?”

           The voice on the other end of the line sounded small, almost impossibly so. He barely recognized it at first, until he glanced in disbelief at the contact name and brought the phone back to his ear. “‘liza? Is that you?”

           “Yeah,” she said.

           The silence that followed was heavy, pregnant with words that didn’t know how to make themselves known.

           “‘lijah, I’m in trouble,” she said, and there was just enough tremble in her voice for him to gauge exactly how much trouble she was in.

           It was a lot.

           “Where do you need me?” he asked without hesitation.

           Eliza rattled off an address that he recognized as a park near where they grew up. “How soon can you be here?” she asked, voice edged with panic.

           “Twenty minutes.”

           She let out a small, relieved exhale. “Good. Bring wire cutters.”

           The line died before he had a chance to question the request.

*

           Nothing in life prepares you to rescue a friend from an abusive relationship. Well, really, Eliza had rescued herself. She just needed help with the cleanup.

           When the work was said and done, we sat on a cliffside and sipped from two cheap beer cans.

           “How long has it been going on?” Elijah asked.

           Eliza hummed. She seemed cheerful- but unlike Elijah, this wasn’t her first beer. She’d damn near cleared out half a twelve pack before he’d gotten there. She was drunk from beer and freedom. “Years. Not all of ‘em, but most of ‘em.”

           “I’m sorry.”

           “For what?” Eliza asked, staring out at the midnight stars.

           Elijah pondered that a while. What, indeed. Eliza had shut him out years ago. He’d noticed red flags and tried to warn her, and though he’d been her Man of Honor at her wedding, he’d been kicked out of the reception by the newlywed husband. He’d been a little sore that Eliza hadn’t stopped him. Ever since, he’d offered her a couch maybe once a year and pleaded with her to see sense.

           He’d known things were bad- he just didn’t know how bad. Maybe if he’d been more supportive of her, quieter about it, maybe she would have opened up to him enough for him to save her. Maybe if he wasn’t so stubborn and got to know the guy…

           ….nah. The more Elijah thought about it, it never would have played out any other way, no matter what he did.

           “I don’t know,” he said, finally. “I just hate that it ended up this way.”

           Eliza pressed the cold beer to her swollen, purple eye. “Me too.”

           “Do you have a place to go?” I asked. Her bags were already set up in his backseat. She couldn’t leave them in her own car.

           “No,” she chirped. “I don’t want to think about it tonight. I could stay here for all I care.”

           Elijah laughed, “So, my house it is then.”

           “Still live in that stuffy condo with that stuffy woman?” Eliza asked.

           Elijah ignored the pang in his chest. “No,” he said. “Tiana left me last month. Sorry, I thought I’d told you.”

           “Oh,” Eliza said. She didn’t say it, but the disappointment was plain on her face.

           And he got it- really. There was once a time when he’d ran to her with every little update. But that had changed when Tommy came into the picture.

           “What will your father think?” Elijah asked, shifting topics.

           “He’ll be devastated,” Eliza said with a sigh. “He loved Tommy. O’ course he did, they were just alike. Two peas in the shittiest pod. Momma would’ve been delighted, but o’ course, momma ain’t here no more.”

           “Right,” Elijah sipped his beer.

           There was another long stretch of silence. “I’m scared, ‘lijah.”

           “Oh, ‘liza,” he said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “Don’t be. He’s out of your life for good- you made sure of that.”

           “I know,” she said. “But won’t they see the brake line? Won’t they look?”

           Elijah’s eyes slid down the cliff, where her car was upside down and aflame, her husband inside. Hopefully they wouldn’t be able to tell cause of death. The concussive blow to the head could be from a car accident, sure, but in actuality, it had been an overwhelmed Eliza with a steel baseball bat. She swore he’d been alive when she loaded him into her car and that she was driving him to the hospital (ambulances are far too expensive for a deadbeat like him)- but he was deader than dead by the time Elijah had arrived at the park.

           “Hopefully, the car is too mangled for them to notice.” He stood and offered her hand when he saw the first flashing light and heard the first of the sirens. “That’s our cue to get out of here.”

           Eliza took his hand. “My fingerprints, though,” Eliza said, before using my support to stand. “They’ll be all over the car.”

           “It’s your car,” Elijah scoffed. “Why wouldn’t they be?”

           Eliza squirmed. “I guess.”

           “You won’t go to jail, Eliza,” Elijah said, opening the door for her. “If you even come up as a suspect, I’ll hire you the best lawyer money can buy. And hearing your story, your history, no jury would hold you accountable for taking a monster out of the world.”

           “I hope so,” she said.

           “I know so,” he replied. He jogged around the door and got in the passenger seat. They were cleared of the clifftop and pulled onto the interstate by the time the first cop car passed them. Eliza hadn’t said a word, and Elijah was stealing glances. “What’s on your mind?” he asked, as if she hadn’t literally just murdered someone, and he hadn’t literally just helped her ‘hide’ the body.

           “Should I be happy now?” she asked, voice small. He hated that the bastard had made any part of Eliza Johnson small. “I mean, he was a wife-beatin’ sonofabitch, I know that, but… he had his good times. There was a reason I stayed, you know? He was…”

           “You wouldn’t be human if you were happy about this, Eliza,” Elijah responded, squeezing her hand. “It’s going to take time, but I know you and you can get through anything you put that thick skull of yours up to.”

           She frowned, and Elijah could tell that she didn’t like that answer.

           “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, “Him, I mean.”

           She stared out the window, and it bothered Elijah to no end that he couldn’t see the look on her face. He used to be able to practically read her mind- but then, she’d always worn her heart on her sleeve. Now, her face was like smooth pond water on a windless day. No ripples, no emotion, nothing- ready to reflect whatever it needed to.

           Elijah hated that he had taught her to make a face like that.

           “No,” she said, finally, with a resoluteness in her voice that was much more like her old self. “No. Let’s let the dead stay dead.”